Recent content by Marvo

Thanks for letting us know. Didn't realise it was a rental, it's good to err on the side of caution and replacing it it sounds like a sensible resolution. Hopefully it wouldn't have cost much more if the electrician was already on site to do the testing.

I'm guessing the main isolater is inside the hand soap dispenser....

I'd agree that a certain amount of sparking would be normal and with it being an isolator switch that's probably only used occasionally I wouldn't worry about it. If for some reason you're using the switch on a daily or regular basis I'd probably just spend the few quid and replace it if it was...

Did your suppliers have any definative answers on why the drive went tits up?

Glad you found your fault. Usually soldering isn't used in an electrical installations, it doesn't age well and solder joints often fail over time. Mechanical connections and terminations are the preferred method for connecting wires to accessories.. Did you try removing the dimmer and...

20 years ago power fail regularly damaged VFD's, nowadays nearly all drives are designed to survive a complete unexpected power outage. Usually somewhere in the 600 page, 14 language manual it will state a limit to the frequency of power outages the drive is capable of handing and where I am we...

The frequency gauge will indicate grid overload if it falls below 50Hz for any length of time without correction being applied. This will indicate that supply side demand has outstripped generation capacity and I'd expect they have a plan for this where they'll immediately shed some large...

I've never owned one of those fancy MFT's. I've always been fan of kyoritsu test gear which I think is branded as Kewtech in the UK and I've got several testers I still use regularly in the workshop that are well over 20 years old and still accurate and reliable. Teh clamp/volt meter has...

I would absolutely agree with that sentiment Murdoch.

It's possible to profile and identify electrical loads by characteristics such as their current over time, their inrush current, the phase angle, noise spikes, duration, frequency of reoccurance, functional earth leakage currents present and power factor to name but a few. Basically by looking...

Is there a particular reason you did the live leakage test? You say the leakage is roughly equal from your new installation and the original installation so it's not cause by a single culprit and depending on the circuits and equipment connected I wouldn't consider 150-170mA leakage as...

I'd be more worried about there could be two separate equipotential zones within touch distance of each other. I'd definately suggest you get an electrician in to assess the situation.

IT equipment with switch mode power supplies can cause common mode noise. Depending on the capacitive value of the EMC filters and any PFC circuitry and the frequency of the noise it can cause RCD/RCBO's to nuisance trip and this tripping tendency can be amplified if it's a ring final circuit...

Looking at the state of the copper conductor it looks like that cable was cut whilst it was live....

Getting back to VDE tools just very briefly I couldn't resist buying these. I can throw one in each of my non-VDE socket sets and declare that they're now VDE rated. :)