puffernutter
Puffernutter
- Messages
- 1,882
- Location
- Wiltshire
I hope you are sitting comfortably, this will take a while!
Pin back your lug-holes and listen!
Last week I came down for breakfast and with no good reason I could see (I hadn’t just turned anything on) the RCBO for the downstairs sockets tripped out. No problem, off to the consumer unit, reset and all is well. Or so I thought!
Tuesday morning, up at 05.30 as I was in London for the next three days. Turn on the kettle, feed the dogs and the same trip goes again! Back to the consumer unit, this time it won’t reset! A mad dash around the house to unplug everything in the sockets (this house was wired by the builder that owned it previously and the circuit included the downstairs sockets, half the kitchen and one of the bedrooms!) I said it was weird!
All to no avail, it wouldn’t reset and my train was due in 30 minutes (with 15 minutes to get to the station).
At Swindon (where I changed) I phoned my wife and suggested that we had a temporary option in that most of those rooms had sockets in for a separate ring we had planned for the electric heating that never happened, so with a few extension leads and portable appliances moved from one side of the kitchen to another, we had a temporary, workable solution.
Fast forward to Thursday evening. Home after 3 days in London, so I start to fault find and I forget a key lesson I had learned from a previous instance. I pick part of the ring in the kitchen and disconnect it. Megger each side, one is OK, the other not. Identify which live is which and only have that in the RCBO (with the associated neutral). Try to reset, it won’t. Remove both the lives from the RCBO and try to reset. It won’t! Remove both the neutrals, it still won’t. Physically take it out of the consumer unit. It still won’t reset!! RULE 1. Test the RCBO first!
Change the RCBO, put the live and neutral back in for the circuit that seemed OK, it reset! We now have a baseline and power to some of the kitchen!
It’s late and time to go to bed.
Friday evening. Start the faulting again. Move closer to the consumer unit and find everything is OK. I suddenly click that there is a socket in the utility room, downstream of the kitchen socket. Get the plate off and there are 4 connections in there. Remove them all and all the ring springs into life! Identify the cable that’s causing the problem and it’s one that’s heading through the ceiling space. Suspect it is one to a box on an outside wall. Late, dark and wet, so remove that from the circuit and put everything back together and all sockets are working again!
Saturday morning, open up the box on the outside wall and expect to find it sopping wet. Nope, dry as a bone, no idea why it is causing the problem. Doesn’t appear to be connected to anything, so just leave it disconnected. It’s been a week now and we haven’t found anything that’s not working
So a fun time, it would happen when I was away, but we found a temporary fix. The spare RCBOs I had were too large for my consumer unit, so if they are any good to anybody, give me a shout. I’ve also bought spares of a size that will fit!
RULE 1 – check the RCBO is not the problem first! As it was I had multiple problems (no idea why they all came together) but managed to systematically sort it and the Megger was invaluable.
Puffernutter
Pin back your lug-holes and listen!
Last week I came down for breakfast and with no good reason I could see (I hadn’t just turned anything on) the RCBO for the downstairs sockets tripped out. No problem, off to the consumer unit, reset and all is well. Or so I thought!
Tuesday morning, up at 05.30 as I was in London for the next three days. Turn on the kettle, feed the dogs and the same trip goes again! Back to the consumer unit, this time it won’t reset! A mad dash around the house to unplug everything in the sockets (this house was wired by the builder that owned it previously and the circuit included the downstairs sockets, half the kitchen and one of the bedrooms!) I said it was weird!
All to no avail, it wouldn’t reset and my train was due in 30 minutes (with 15 minutes to get to the station).
At Swindon (where I changed) I phoned my wife and suggested that we had a temporary option in that most of those rooms had sockets in for a separate ring we had planned for the electric heating that never happened, so with a few extension leads and portable appliances moved from one side of the kitchen to another, we had a temporary, workable solution.
Fast forward to Thursday evening. Home after 3 days in London, so I start to fault find and I forget a key lesson I had learned from a previous instance. I pick part of the ring in the kitchen and disconnect it. Megger each side, one is OK, the other not. Identify which live is which and only have that in the RCBO (with the associated neutral). Try to reset, it won’t. Remove both the lives from the RCBO and try to reset. It won’t! Remove both the neutrals, it still won’t. Physically take it out of the consumer unit. It still won’t reset!! RULE 1. Test the RCBO first!
Change the RCBO, put the live and neutral back in for the circuit that seemed OK, it reset! We now have a baseline and power to some of the kitchen!
It’s late and time to go to bed.
Friday evening. Start the faulting again. Move closer to the consumer unit and find everything is OK. I suddenly click that there is a socket in the utility room, downstream of the kitchen socket. Get the plate off and there are 4 connections in there. Remove them all and all the ring springs into life! Identify the cable that’s causing the problem and it’s one that’s heading through the ceiling space. Suspect it is one to a box on an outside wall. Late, dark and wet, so remove that from the circuit and put everything back together and all sockets are working again!
Saturday morning, open up the box on the outside wall and expect to find it sopping wet. Nope, dry as a bone, no idea why it is causing the problem. Doesn’t appear to be connected to anything, so just leave it disconnected. It’s been a week now and we haven’t found anything that’s not working
So a fun time, it would happen when I was away, but we found a temporary fix. The spare RCBOs I had were too large for my consumer unit, so if they are any good to anybody, give me a shout. I’ve also bought spares of a size that will fit!
RULE 1 – check the RCBO is not the problem first! As it was I had multiple problems (no idea why they all came together) but managed to systematically sort it and the Megger was invaluable.
Puffernutter
it never ruffles my feathers. i like fault finding did nigh time callouts for 15 years in a 70 mile radius and had hundreds
