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Electrical

My main fuse box trips randomly

Anonymous user 28/02/2024 - 3.17 PM

I live in a COUNCIL house & have had this problem periodically over the last 15 years. I have had council electricians out to it so many times I've lost count! EVERY single time they've told me they can't find anything wrong with it & unless they're (miraculously) stood there when it trips there's nothing they can do! To get it back on I have to turn off some of the other fuses & if I leave it like that for a while I can switch those back on without tripping the main switch again. There's no one thing that keeps making it trip. It happens day or night & has been known to happen several times in a single day. It has periods where it keeps tripping & then it can be fine again for days, weeks or even months!! This week, it has started doing it again randomly & during this time I noticed it's taken a disliking to me putting my dryer (approx 6 months old) on! It's fine for a completely random amount of time, then it trips again. It has done this before with other appliances when its having a tripping frenzy & when it randomly returns to not tripping, you can use the appliance normally again & it doesn't trip the electric! My question is....is it dangerous & what can I do about it?

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2 Answers

Anonymous user

It's an intermittent fault, which in all fairness, are a complete nightmare. It's not overly dangerous because the RCD/MCB is doing what it's designed to do. But the problem does need to be found and rectified and there is no excuse for the council not rectifying. You just have to test in a methodical way and the fault will be discovered, no matter how random it seems, it's anything but, its just a case of pinning it down. It takes time but anybody who knows how to test and fault find, will locate and rectify the fault. It will not be rectified by blindly replacing accessories and is highly unlikely to be a ring final wiring fault. As a side note, if your tumble dryer is knocking out the RCD, and is fitted with a condenser unit, they do tend to trip RCDs unless they are regularly emptied. If you are local to surrey, I would be happy to attend and track it down for you, there is little I like more than these sort of faults. Danny

Answered15 December 2015

Anonymous user

Hi, We've seen this quite a lot, I would imagine it's a certain fuse that's tripping but if not and the rcd is tripping out then start by replacing the sockets and checking the wiring in each socket. If no joy the a continuity test will need to be done, there could be a split wire in the ring which will show up under test, Thanks John

Answered9 December 2015