brummydave
Senior Member
I did a search for 'borrowed neutral' and it got no results on here. I was a little staggered considering it was such a common practice that now falls foul of splitting lighting circuits onto separate RCDs so thought i'd post on the subject!
So I was wondering what methods anyone uses for testing/solving this issue?
I'm in the process of replacing an MCB only board with an RCBO board and have had some weird occurences on the lighting circuits. There are two, one up, one down. The landing & hall lights are connected to the downstairs circuit with two way switching on just the landing light. When both circuits were re-energised all the lights operated as expected, except for the landing light. That tripped both the up and down RCBOs. After being reset (and the landing light off) then followed a series of random tripping that had no logic to it! My current solution is to put both circuits on one RCBO until I've time to solve the problem....
As well as all the usual tests which came up fine, I tested continuity at the board between the two lighting neutrals and found there to be none so that went part way to me expecting the neutral was not borrowed.
There's a fair number of single neutral cables dotted around the light fittings but as i've no access under boards I've not been able to trace every route. Think i'll have to get my wander lead out
Any tips or tricks please?
Thanks
D.
So I was wondering what methods anyone uses for testing/solving this issue?
I'm in the process of replacing an MCB only board with an RCBO board and have had some weird occurences on the lighting circuits. There are two, one up, one down. The landing & hall lights are connected to the downstairs circuit with two way switching on just the landing light. When both circuits were re-energised all the lights operated as expected, except for the landing light. That tripped both the up and down RCBOs. After being reset (and the landing light off) then followed a series of random tripping that had no logic to it! My current solution is to put both circuits on one RCBO until I've time to solve the problem....
As well as all the usual tests which came up fine, I tested continuity at the board between the two lighting neutrals and found there to be none so that went part way to me expecting the neutral was not borrowed.
There's a fair number of single neutral cables dotted around the light fittings but as i've no access under boards I've not been able to trace every route. Think i'll have to get my wander lead out
Any tips or tricks please?
Thanks
D.