Killed the electrics to the whole house

[Herbert1]

Hi,
Removing a shower pump accidentally touched the neutral wire with the earth wire from pump and tripped the RCD. Reset the RCD only to have the whole Power go off approx 5 seconds later nothing tripped but completely no power on any circuits just dead.

Checked the incoming mains and noticed the electric meter was dead. Called Southern Electric and said that the joint had blown where the house mains connects to the one out in the road. Big Fuse not blown. Having really bad day - surely the electrics should be able to handle this and not blow the incoming mains joint.

anyone help me understand how I've killed the electrics...

H

 

[Adam_151]

1) Its not unusual for a neutral-> earth short on a circuit that only had the live isolated, to trip an upstream RCD... infact its the norm... quite often one would disocnnect the neutral for the circuit at the DB during work if tripping the RCD would create a nuisence.

2) A failed unground joint is not going to be related to the other events, and will be a co-incidence. However it is not unusual for them to go on the first proper frost of the year....

 

[industryspark]

Very strange occurence, like Adam says, probably just co-incidence.

Funny related story though.....I know of a guy who thought it was a good idea to move the wooden board containing his CU, meter, service head and mains fuse etc...........board unscrewed and lots of tugging and pulling ensued...........one big blue flash from under his house later and he'd managed to take out the supply to over a dozen houses. Ofcourse he just screwed the board back and played dumb whilst much confusion went on around him.