Recent content by RainbowLaura

This is what I feared... it sounds like failing to get the report when we purchased may have been an expensive lesson! My brain is now jumping to conclusions about having to rip the kitchen out if the fault is in there somewhere :cry:

I opened up the little bracket, and another one the same the other side, but nothing looks damaged in there either (to my very untrained eye) :( Perhaps the socket/house wiring is to blame after all...

Thank you, I'll see if I can have a closer look at that tomorrow.

Ok, have opened it up to have a look. The only thing that didn't look right to me was burnt crispy stuff just underneath the bulbs, but that could have been from a year ago when one of the bulbs did shatter inside: Here is the full setup: Bottom left: Bottom right: Right side...

Hmm, I see what you're saying... our electrician thought more along the lines of, something may have been picked up before that made them think it should be tested again in 5 years. Annoyingly we never got the report from the previous owners. Would your recommended course of action be to skip...

Although it was only tested in 2014, it does say "retest due April 2019" though. It would be nice to at least have it in date (maybe even for things like insurance, if something did end up going very wrong... catastrophising again maybe but that's how my brain works :oops:)

Thanks - that is exactly what the electrician said when he was explaining what the test and report would involve. He gave the consumer unit as an example of something that would be flagged up, but also said he personally wouldn't deem it necessary to replace. Will keep our fingers crossed that...

The fire does work fully - as soon as I flipped the MCB back on after the bang and flash it came back on as though nothing had happened... someone else suggested to me that a bit of dust could even have caused it? I have stopped using the fire now though, even though our electrician said it...

Thank you, that's reassuring. This is a really bad time for us financially and I have been feeling a bit sick about it all day. Especially if it's a damp problem as well and turns into a double job that runs well into thousands of pounds... I am a bit of a catastrophiser :oops:

I've just thought... I'm pretty certain we didn't switch the electric oven off at the mains while the testing was being done. Could that have made it look as though there was a fault when there wasn't? I so want the fire to be the cause of the problem (though do realise that wishing something...

Thank you for the replies :) To be honest a lot of what he said went over my head, and I may have misunderstood about the low current. He definitely mentioned short circuiting though, and said it had been picked up when he tested the socket. He made sure that all appliances on that circuit were...

The other night I switched on my electric fire, and it made a loud bang and tripped the MCB. The same thing happened 11 or 12 months ago, but at that time a bulb inside it shattered so I simply replaced the bulb and all was fine until now. However this time, when I flipped the MCB back on...

Thank you - I will try to put it to the back of my mind :)

Yes sorry, I do have an anxiety problem which I think is probably more of an issue than the DPC thing! Thanks so much for your replies, which have reassured me. Nope there is no sign of damp at all inside the house. The house was all shut up when we were away during that very rainy period...

We have lived in our house for a good few years now with no obvious issues, but this has worried me since I noticed last year... The house is on a slight slope and the driveway to the side is higher than the inside floor level. In the below (rubbish) pic, the red line shows where the DPC is on...