POWERCUT PROBLEM DIAGNOSIS REQUIRED

[monkfish10]

Hello,

Moved into a first floor flat house conversion september 2015. Was told by landlord that new fuse box installed 18 months ago and electrics had been tested and inspected. Have had around 6 powercuts over last few months usually around 1 month or so in between - and the latest one, which I will discuss in next paragraph, has me a bit worried. When trying to resolve the powercuts I switch off all plug sockets/unplug everything and flick down all circuit breakers and turn off the mains and wait 1/2hr - 1hr for the fuse box to calm down before flicking them on again. Whenever I flick up the socket circuit breaker switch it ALWAYS causes the main power switch to go down. All the other circuits (lights, smoke alarm, cooker light, doorbell) are fully operational when socket circuit breaker switch is down.  It takes several hours or longer for the circuit breaker that feeds the sockets to stop the main switch from tripping and finally stay up which gets everything back to normal

I assume the powercuts are due to crappy or faulty wall wiring and that maybe when there are a lot of appliances running at once an overload occurs due to the weak electrics being unable to cope ? - i'm always careful to make sure that too many things aren't plugged in at once.

HOWEVER, this time had a powercut like always, but when the sockets came back on, the lights went off and wouldn't come back on again. It's been 2 days. Strange thing is that the lights circuit breaker switch, all the other switches  and the main switch remain UP!? Read somewhere that a wire could have melted as a side effect of the powercut and/or switching the fuse box on/off causing the lights circuit breaker to become defective? I'm worried that this is a fire risk?

I'm pretty certain a faulty applicance isn't causing the powercuts because I use everything pretty much every day and surely a powercut would happen not long soon after? Landlord suggsted that the heating element in washing machine was originally causing them but had the heating element replaced and powercuts still followed suit. Can't say for sure but I think some of the powercuts have happened when I'm in the kitchen doing washing up running hot water from kitchen tap. Could it be something to do with the boiler or maybe it just contributes to the electrical flow resulting in an overload?

Please can someone suggest what is causing this very annoying problem and offer any advice on how to fix it ! I have an electrician coming round tomorrow but want a heads up so I can explain the situation in more detail.

Thanks, Cal

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Hi there,

Firstly, dont call them powercuts. The circuit breakers (inc the Rcd )have tripped off due to a fault/s  The Rcd tripping off ( what you have called the main power switch, it cant be as the lights etc stayed on) would be down to a fault such as a heating element 'leaking' electricity to earth.  It could also be due to damp, rodent damage and many more things.  Normal causes are when an appliance with water is involved.  The lighting is a different fault, it is a short circuit between the cables. Almost 100% nothing to do with the breaker tripping off other times and/or the other 'powercuts'. Could be you changed a light bulb and twisted the holder round ?

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

An rcd tripping has not got  anything do do with overloading, only leakage.  Does it have the letters RCD , & a small button that says T or test . Is it also double the width of the other circuit breakers  ?

 

[ProDave]

You definitely need a competent electrician to fault find this. It is your landlords responsibility to arrange that. Inform him in no uncertain terms that you have a FAULT with the wiring. When an electrician gets there you can ecplain what trips and show him exactly which circuit breakers and rcd's trip.

When it next trips unpleg EVERYTHING. If it still won't reset then it's a fault with the fixed wiring, not your appliances.

Anything that the landliors supplies is their responsibility to repair and they should have been tested and have a valid tested label on them.

 

[binky]

have a sniff around the distribution board ofr smells of burning, possibly 'fishy' smell. I suspect this may be a loose meter tail connection, possibly in the neutral line, hence electric is on, but things keep failing. Serious fault, get it attended to immediately.

 

[monkfish10]

have a sniff around the distribution board ofr smells of burning, possibly 'fishy' smell. I suspect this may be a loose meter tail connection, possibly in the neutral line, hence electric is on, but things keep failing. Serious fault, get it attended to immediately.

Thats good advice thanks

1. Just a thought but could a faulty socket be causing all of this?

2. Also, I realised i forgot to unplug a couple of things during the reset process. Is it possible that when i was resetting the RCD (when the socket circuit breakers were tripping it) the frequent switching on and off combined with a couple of things still plugged in could have fried the circuit breaker that feeds the lights??

 

[binky]

issues on sockets don't cause light MCbs to fail. What bothers me is that the fault seems to affect multiple circuits, now it is quite common to share an RCD across multiple circuits, but if MCBs are tripping, that isn't normal. Please look up RCD and MCB so you know what the difference is. Even better contact an admin so you can post a picture of your board.

The other possibility is water ingress, or some really bad wiring that has a link between lights and sockets.

 

[Murdoch]

Please can someone suggest what is causing this very annoying problem and offer any advice on how to fix it ! I have an electrician coming round tomorrow but want a heads up so I can explain the situation in more detail.

Thanks, Cal

ALL you need to do is show the sparky the fuseboard and talk them through the issues as you find them. If you can replicate the issue then that would help too.

Please give us feedback on what happens....