Perhaps he hasn't bypassed the RCD but has bypassed the section of the ring final that includes the fault?
Some sockets not working?
- Thread starter blackcloud
- Start date
Sponsored Links
He has. This has been confirmed now beyond all doubt (not that there ever was any).
Where?
Post #23.
Sponsored Links
OP phoned him and he said.
I found my fault BTW and I didn't need the bypass links! Power back on and faulty cable replaced.
I found the fault all on my own!
I found my fault BTW and I didn't need the bypass links! Power back on and faulty cable replaced.
I found the fault all on my own!
I looked at the pics and notice it was a dual rcd board, it would be unlikely you could not get some sockets on and leave the rcd in place, even if it meant rejigging the board, which it looks like it needs anyway..as we know even with one rcd off, some sockets ideally should work.
we used to do out of hours insurance callouts and very rarely returned, we were there just to do our best in one hour for them to get by till normal hours.
The insurance would not pay over an hour, let alone a return visit, without written confirmation from the owners.
Removing an rcd knowing your unlikely to return would be too much for my consiouce.
The op has stated the boiler was on an extension already , so not hard to have got power to that, even in a 2 storey house, so even simpler in a flat, he had lights, so too me that would have been fine, till the owners got there blokes in.
I too agree, its low risk, but as weve often said, theres no record of how many people have avoided injury thanks to rcds, but in the proberly unlikely event something did happen , the person removing it would have a lot to explain.
Simily if the place unlikely burnt down through unrelated causes , im sure the Fire brigade will be first to blame the poor fuse board.
Every one knows Temporary repairs often get overlooked and may well become permanent.
Anyway its done now, if I was the op id get a written report from the company that attended, to show to the owner what and why he did what he did, and pass the problem back to him
we used to do out of hours insurance callouts and very rarely returned, we were there just to do our best in one hour for them to get by till normal hours.
The insurance would not pay over an hour, let alone a return visit, without written confirmation from the owners.
Removing an rcd knowing your unlikely to return would be too much for my consiouce.
The op has stated the boiler was on an extension already , so not hard to have got power to that, even in a 2 storey house, so even simpler in a flat, he had lights, so too me that would have been fine, till the owners got there blokes in.
I too agree, its low risk, but as weve often said, theres no record of how many people have avoided injury thanks to rcds, but in the proberly unlikely event something did happen , the person removing it would have a lot to explain.
Simily if the place unlikely burnt down through unrelated causes , im sure the Fire brigade will be first to blame the poor fuse board.
Every one knows Temporary repairs often get overlooked and may well become permanent.
Anyway its done now, if I was the op id get a written report from the company that attended, to show to the owner what and why he did what he did, and pass the problem back to him
Fair enough - but how much rejigging of the board would you be able to do in what was left of that one hour after initial time spent trying to diagnose the fault?
Again, fair enough - I can understand you (or anyone, particularly a professional electrician) taking that viewpoint. For the same reasons of 'self interest', I probably would not do it - at least, not in anyone's home but my own - but I'm still not sure what I would do in that situation (in someone else's house), particularly if I had to do everything within a total of one hour's on-site time.
Kind Regards, John
Only registers NICEIC and ELECSA notifications. I doesnt take note of notifiactions done for other 'charities'
Why oh why didn't the ODPM's office go for a single Corgi-style CPS body?
Ahh, wondered about that. Shame- as you say, a single register would have been far more useful
You could not do a lot to be honest.
As you entered the premises, you were sort of in defensive mode, after about 15 minutes you tended to know if it was sortable, you couldnt get involved moving furniture, ripping floors up, as the time was not feasible to put it all back again.
With Dual boards if say one rcd wouldnt reset you might just move one usefull circuit, to another spare way just for some power, or possibly bunch up a circuit, maybe make up a lead or two for freezer or table lights.
The people brought the insurance, not reading the small print that it was limited to one hours labour, of course they could have longer if they agreed to pay the insurers, but there rates were ridiculous.
when you told the clients , they werent to pleased, it was all a gimmick and on national tv ads, but I think its all stopped now apart from Direct Line.
Most of our works reactive and constant pressure to, get stores etc back on and minimise stock and trade loss, so you tend to have a back up plan ready.
In the OPs case he called the bloke in so luckily the only restraints was how much the op wanted to pay him direct
A lot of our calls were on sundays, where people had done, diy badly.
One cheeky sod had blown the lights, after about 20 minutes I noted a B+Q box on the bed, despite him being asked on arival if he had any idea what caused it, he then admitted he blew the circuit putting it up, he had then put the old light back hoping we wouldnt notice, on inspection hed joint all the blacks.
he then produced more lights and asked me to put them up at the insurance companies cost, I pointed out the 1 hour time limit and his response was just do what you can till the times up, maybe if hed been honest at the start, i might have.
As you entered the premises, you were sort of in defensive mode, after about 15 minutes you tended to know if it was sortable, you couldnt get involved moving furniture, ripping floors up, as the time was not feasible to put it all back again.
With Dual boards if say one rcd wouldnt reset you might just move one usefull circuit, to another spare way just for some power, or possibly bunch up a circuit, maybe make up a lead or two for freezer or table lights.
The people brought the insurance, not reading the small print that it was limited to one hours labour, of course they could have longer if they agreed to pay the insurers, but there rates were ridiculous.
when you told the clients , they werent to pleased, it was all a gimmick and on national tv ads, but I think its all stopped now apart from Direct Line.
Most of our works reactive and constant pressure to, get stores etc back on and minimise stock and trade loss, so you tend to have a back up plan ready.
In the OPs case he called the bloke in so luckily the only restraints was how much the op wanted to pay him direct
A lot of our calls were on sundays, where people had done, diy badly.
One cheeky sod had blown the lights, after about 20 minutes I noted a B+Q box on the bed, despite him being asked on arival if he had any idea what caused it, he then admitted he blew the circuit putting it up, he had then put the old light back hoping we wouldnt notice, on inspection hed joint all the blacks.
he then produced more lights and asked me to put them up at the insurance companies cost, I pointed out the 1 hour time limit and his response was just do what you can till the times up, maybe if hed been honest at the start, i might have.
- Joined
- 12 Mar 2016
- Messages
- 237
- Reaction score
- 2
- Country
This is what the emergency electrician said.
This was an emergency call out to restore power to your
flat, further work needs to be carried out at the property to locate
fault with socket circuit and restore the rcd protection to the flat.
This would involve testing, and possibly rewiring of the socket circuit.
The other electrician who came out on Saturday said.
The fault will be with the flat wiring not the fuse box, looked wired correct, just untidy and rushed.
If the letting agents send out their own electrician or if I have to get someone out I want to make sure they are aware of what has been done before them and to make them aware of what equipment they will need to bring with them, as I dont want them coming out and doing the same thing the other two have done which is just tests the sockets and examine the fuse box etc and not being able to full fix the issue.
So what can I say that they need to bring equipment wise and what can I say specifically that needs to be done when they come?
If this is fix correctly how long could it potentially take to be done? Could it mean knocking down a wall to get to a wire?
This was an emergency call out to restore power to your
flat, further work needs to be carried out at the property to locate
fault with socket circuit and restore the rcd protection to the flat.
This would involve testing, and possibly rewiring of the socket circuit.
The other electrician who came out on Saturday said.
The fault will be with the flat wiring not the fuse box, looked wired correct, just untidy and rushed.
If the letting agents send out their own electrician or if I have to get someone out I want to make sure they are aware of what has been done before them and to make them aware of what equipment they will need to bring with them, as I dont want them coming out and doing the same thing the other two have done which is just tests the sockets and examine the fuse box etc and not being able to full fix the issue.
So what can I say that they need to bring equipment wise and what can I say specifically that needs to be done when they come?
If this is fix correctly how long could it potentially take to be done? Could it mean knocking down a wall to get to a wire?
Last edited:
Fair enough. 45 minutes left ...
Possibly. Given the absence of CU labelling in the OP's case, it would presumably take a significant amount of time to investigate which circuit was which before one could do that (unless one just 'guessed'!) - and that would eat into one's 45 remaining minutes, but maybe that would leave you enough time to do something (if you're a very quick worker!).
As I said before, I can understand your reluctance to bypass an RCD - so, if you could do something else in the time available which would restore a usable amount of power for the OP, then that would clearly be a better option.
Kind Regards, John
As has been said, you should do everything possible to avoid getting involved in getting an electrician out. Whoever does that, if the electrician needed to be told what equipment to bring, or what needed to be done, I think there would be a much bigger problem than just the matter of equipment - so I really think you should try to make that the problem of the landlord or letting agent, not yourself (but getting them to call out the electrician). As for what you tell an electrician who comes, you only need to describe what has been happening (as you have to us) and tell them than an electrician has temporarily bypassed the RCCB which was tripping. It will then be up to then to diagnose the problem and work out what needs to be done.
Without know a lot more, it's impossible to say. It could possibly be 'disruptive', but it wouldn't involve "knocking down walls" - but that is all the landlord's problem, not yours. On the other hand, of course, a competent electrician may be able to find the problem and rectify it very easily and quickly, with little or no disruption.
One thing I forget to ask you .... In your present situation, with the RCCB bypassed but still without 6 sockets working, are ALL of the breakers in your 'fuse box' in the 'up' position?
Kind Regards, John
I've been thinking, and revisiting the original OP.
We all seem to have been overlooking the fact that, at least initially, it was not just an RCD that was tripping. An MCB also operated - and, if I understand the OP correctly, whilst the RCD could be reset whilst that MCB remained open, when the OP closed the MCB the RCD immediately tripped again. That sounds rather like an L-E fault in the circuit concerned (or something connected to that circuit) - possibly the circuit serving the 6 sockets that are still not working (after bypassing the RCD) ... or, possibly, an N-E fault in that or another circuit, if the circuit supplied by that MCB were fairly heavily loaded at the time.
I therefore wonder (and have just asked the OP) whether it's just possible that, as well as bypassing the RCD, the electrician also opened that MCB. I have to admit that that doesn't make much sense - since, if that cured the problem (albeit with one circuit disabled), then opening the MCB without bypassing the RCD would presumably have equally cured the problem.
Thoughts?
Kind Regards, John
- Joined
- 12 Mar 2016
- Messages
- 237
- Reaction score
- 2
- Country
Yes I know that any competent electrician "should" have all the necessary equipment for what needs to be done in this situation but just incase he doesnt bring the correct equipment and has to come back another day Id rather avoid that and just say "listen please can you bring x and x" JUST IN CASE
Yes ALL of the breakers in my 'fuse box' are in the 'up' position, infact all the switches are on the up position (I think so) but not totally sure as the fuse box is at the back of a walk in cloest and I had to put everything back in and didnt look before I put everything back. He said he had left all the breakers in the on position though so presume he did. Since the very first power cut on Friday afternoon at 3pm I still have not got 6 working sockets, 3 in living room, 1 hall way, 1 bedroom, 2 large bedroom. So sorry 7 sockets. So around half of the flat sockets dont work and half do.
Yes ALL of the breakers in my 'fuse box' are in the 'up' position, infact all the switches are on the up position (I think so) but not totally sure as the fuse box is at the back of a walk in cloest and I had to put everything back in and didnt look before I put everything back. He said he had left all the breakers in the on position though so presume he did. Since the very first power cut on Friday afternoon at 3pm I still have not got 6 working sockets, 3 in living room, 1 hall way, 1 bedroom, 2 large bedroom. So sorry 7 sockets. So around half of the flat sockets dont work and half do.
DIYnot Local
Staff member
If you need to find a tradesperson to get your job done, please try our local search below, or if you are doing it yourself you can find suppliers local to you.
Select the supplier or trade you require, enter your location to begin your search.
Are you a trade or supplier? You can create your listing free at DIYnot Local
Sponsored Links
