Decorating today, then now all power gone to kitchen area

[croydonite]

Hello,
First post on here so I must be after some help...

First of all, my knowledge of DYI and electrics is fairly basic.
Our house was rewired 2 years ago and a new Wylex consumer unit fitted (seems that it comes with MCB's rather than fuses).
Anyway, recently big project started for a new kitchen.
Kitchen got rewired and currently redecorating.
Today we switched the power off at the CU in order to decorate around the sockets and switches. Removed all faceplates and put insulating around the exposed wires.
Tonight as we tooled down, we found no power in the kitchen. Which means no central heating, hot water, etc. Pretty unlucky given it's November and Saturday evening.
We did have one breaker trip in the afternoon, just pushed the lever back up into position and everything looked fine again.
We don't have any instructions manual for our CU but I can post its model/series (Wylex).
Any help appreciated. It's cold here!
Ta
Chris

 

[Stevoon]

What caused the trip & what breaker was it?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

How many circuits in the kitchen?

If you disconnected all the wires to the sockets, and the boiler is spurred off that circuit then it won't get any power until you get continuity back on that circuit.

 

[ricicle]

^^^What he said. Also if you have not maintained ring continuity then a certain number of points will be dead. What exactly did you do to the wires - join them back together or leave them all seperate ?

 

[mfarrow]

Most socket circuits in this country are wired as a ring, with cable starting from the consumer unit and going from socket to socket before ending back up at the consumer unit.

If you've broken the ring in two places, i.e.by pulling cables apart and taping them up, then any sockets between the breaks won't work. If these happen to be the kitchen sockets then that'll be why they don't work.

Of course, the kitchen sockets might be on a completely different circuit and so your fault is unrelated. Therefore please post us pics. However if you've got only one MCB for sockets then that's likely what's happened.

You should make the ring complete again anyway before energising the circuit.

 

[crystal ball]

Check your connections, you might have nipped on to the insulation rather than the copper

 

[croydonite]

Thanks for all the replies. I'm now sorted, power and boiler back on. I "just" put back some of the plates/sockets, most importantly the 2 closest to the boiler.

The breaker which had tripped earlier in the afternoon controls a different room and had a portable radio and our fishtank (permanently connected and running) plugged into that double socket. I'm really not sure what caused it to trip. Possibly I was disconnecting some wires when it happened, although power was off in the area/MCB I was working on.

I think the 2nd coat will be done tomorrow with the wires still connected rather than everything removed. At least I have found out a little more today about the wiring in the kitchen!

Thanks again!

 

[croydonite]

Just one last question if I may:
When disconnecting/reconnecting my wall sockets and the wires within, I noticed that all the double sockets on the wall were connected with (going left to right) the yellow & green wires, then blue then brown. But one socket was done differently: blue, brown then yellow/green.
Is that important? Right/wrong?
Thanks.

 

[mfarrow]

No, you should reconnect all sockets to complete the rings. There are two safety reasons for this:

Firstly, the cables as a ring will be rated for 32A as the current is shared between the conductors. If the ring is broken, on easch leg the cable will only be rated for 20A, which is less than the fuse size protecting them.

Secondly, if there's a fault on the circuit, it will disconnect more slowly with the ring broken, and possibly not in the time required. This would lead to an increased risk of personal injury and fire.

 

[RF Lighting]

The socket will be marked on the back to tell you which terminal is live, neutral and earth.

This varys between manufacturers, but it is extremely important to ensure the correct wires are in the correct terminals.

 

[Scoby_Beasley]

Just one last question if I may:
When disconnecting/reconnecting my wall sockets and the wires within, I noticed that all the double sockets on the wall were connected with (going left to right) the yellow & green wires, then blue then brown. But one socket was done differently: blue, brown then yellow/green.
Is that important? Right/wrong?
Thanks.

No. Its not wrong, most 2 gang socket outlets, these days, have two earth (green/yellow) terminals on them to enable high integrity earthing (think IT equipment). Whichever earth connection the original sparky used was most likely due to which side he came into the backbox.

But obviously regardless of which side, the lives have to be connected to live and, well, you know the rest!!

 

[croydonite]

Thanks for all this information and help. The mis-wired sockets were reconnected by our decorator/handyman and were definitely done wrong with live and neutral swapped over.

New thread coming up about induction cooker and fuse.

 

[sparkybird]

You may well have tripped the RCD when taking off the socket fronts -all it takes is neutral and earth to touch. It will trip even if the circuit breaker is switched off.