Electrics keep tripping.

Ace Modder

Ace Modder

Ace Modder

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Was 150 yds from OCUK - now 0.5 mile; they moved
Once a day on average my main trip is flicking and all power goes off.

No idea why!!!

None of the individual trips flick just the main one.

It first happened after I unplugged a deep fat fryer. However the switch to the socket was already off. About an hour later I flicked the lounge light on and it tripped again.

Since then once a day it's tripping and no idea why. Lights were off and it just tripped.

Only TV was on in the house other than my hp server, fridge and Virgin box and amp/speakers.

However it has tripped in the past with nothing else running.

It's annoying as hell

How can I find it
 
i know this is kinda a generic response, but it was the first thing i thought, have you tried unplugging everything in the house, then go rouund one by one plugging stuff in? just to see if one of those trips the circuit?
 
Rule out any exterior power sockets, garden pond pumps etc. Inside suspect any item where water and electricity are in close proximity so immersion heater, kettle, steam iron etc.
Been extremely wet just lately so damp ingress also a possibility.
 
That's your RCD tripping and intermittent trips can be the hardest to find for a novice.
It's usually earth leakage which causes the problem and out of the items you've said were running I'm going to guess that your fridge is on the way out.
 
House I was in before shared a grounding point for the whole row, some old guy had decided to take a petrol strimmer to his garden and cut the ground cable/bar without realising.

Although we had other symptoms such as lights flickering but maybe energy savers don't? Was in the day of tungsten.
 
Tracing nuisence tripping faults can sometimes be a right nightmare, the root cause nearly always fits into one of the following.

1) RCD faulty or over sensitive - A 30mA RCD must not trip at less than 15mA but must trip at 30mA. This is easy enough to test for someone with the right equipment, but must be done with the load L+N isolated otherwise issues as per (3) might affect the result.

2) Standing leakage from appliances/equipment putting the RCD close to tripping point, Electronic equipment with switch mode supplies leaks to earth during normal operation. In addition to your PC, consider surge protected extension leads, controllers in washing machines/dishwashers, etc. This is not normally a problem in a standard house, but could be if you run a SETI farm, etc. 10 Desktop PCs is generally considered to be the max you want on a 30mA RCD.

3) Insulation fault, on appliance or fixed wiring. This can be a pain to track down, if its on the fixed wiring and it is present at the time you have someone fault finding, it is not too bad. But it can be issues such as water ingress into external lights... sun comes out it drys out and the fault disappears. More tricky is insulation failure in appliances, in a washing machine or dishwasher, the heating elements are not in circuit all the time, so issues might not show up if an appliance is pat tested, also it could be the story with water ingress

4) Electromagnetic interference / atmospheric disturbance -Things like a storm passing nearyby can cause trips, or if you have a switch (or thermostat in an appliance) with dirty contacts and it arcs as its switched, the same thing can occur)

In summary, get a sparky to have a look, but note that while these things can sometimes be found quickly, sometimes no fault is apparent.

You could consider having the board upgraded to one with RCBOs (these place individual RCD protection on each circuit - advantages are, if it gets tripped, you only loose one circuit, plus if you consider (2) above, standing leakage is spread out a bit more so less likely to trip. The disadvantage of these, is that they are expensive. Don't let anyone talk you into upgrading it to dual RCD. They are almost as much as a compromise as the single RCD is
 
The fridge is less than 1 year old. And has been fine. Doubt it's the fridge but not ruling anything out.
 
No, our hob is gas.

The main trip just went again just now.

This is our fuse box.

2016-03-13%2013.30.28.jpg


I have unplugged the kettle and toaster now. See if this makes any difference.
I'm removing 2 items at a time, till I find out potentially the cause, but as it trips aprox once every 24hours-36hours it is a slow testing game :(
 
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Why are your lights on an RCD?

I think you need an electrician. If you only have a single RCD as opposed to a split board or RCBOs then it's good practise to not have the lights going off when the RCD trips. You also don't have many breakers at all - is that one ring for the whole house, not split out the kitchen sockets etc?

The other option is that your RCD is just dodgy - it looks quite old so that's an option. An electrician will be able to test it.
 
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I have no idea about the lights etc. I'm far from an expert, the house is 80 years old, so much of it is fairly old.

The one thing I've just noticed is that one of my sockets in the kitchen can wobble a few mm when I put pressure on it, or pull a plug out of it. That could be a cause, right?


I've found a couple of sparkys from checkatrade website. Emailed them, so will see what they come back with. Only thing is, having never needed a sparky before, should/would they quote for a fault find diagonstic? I'm happy to pay, but usually is this something that is a chargable thing?
 
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I'd expect to pay for their time. It's not a quote as such - you want them to find the fault and then quote to fix it, so the bit where they locate the fault and tell you what it is would be chargeable.
 
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