Iron tripping RCD!

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dylanlennon

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The Mrs informed me last week that after about 15 minutes of ironing the RCD kept tripping. Was only happening when using the iron. She assumed it was just the iron as it was ancient & went & bought a new one. Same problem still exists with new iron!! Pretty strange as no matter what you use on the different circuits it's only the old & new iron that trips it. The RCD is fairly old to be honest, do you think it could just be the RCD needs swapped or is could there be something else????
 
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Maybe the new iron is faulty? Do you have a friend or neighbour who's house you could try it at? (assuming they have RCD protection of course)

It's 95% likely that it is not the RCD which has gone faulty.
 
Firstly take the new Iron back, it could be faulty or lend a friends iron and try that and see if you still have the circuit trip.
If the CU has a second RCD with socket outlets protected by that try the iron on one of those sockets and see if it trips the second RCD.

If second RCD trips, then I bank on iron fault, if not then it could be that the RCD is starting to fail, or you have other equipment on load that are accumulating a leakage value big enough to trip the RCD.
Could be worth unplugging all loads on circuit, then try Iron on it's own.
It could be worth also looking at the socket outlet, if that is used by iron all the time.
 
Hi, i would agree with op re the age of the RCD can you post a picture of the unit. You may have to get a ramp test done on the RCD.The older units are mechanical devices and the older wylex units are prone to tripping due to age !



Regards,

KA
 
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It would be useful to know what circuits this RCD covers and what loads are on them, especially high power things like electric shower / cooker etc.

It could be a faulty Iron or RCD but to answer the original question

"do you think it could just be the RCD needs swapped or is could there be something else????"

Yes it could be something else. As RF said above a faulty new iron or there is a type of cable fault which can trip an RCD only when the circuit(s) protected by the RCD are loaded.

So rule out the iron and give more details on what the RCD protects and we can advise further.
 
It would be worth getting the irons PAT tested before looking too hard at the house wiring. If they only trip the RCD after getting hot you could try testing after they've been switched on for a while.

A PAT test would quantify any earth leakage, it should be negligible (<0.75mA) but if it's higher it could push your RCD over the edge if it's faulty or if the total leakage of wiring and other appliances is running high.
 
Although it would seem to be iron at fault there is another possibility. When current is drawn the voltage between neutral and earth will increase so if there is a neutral - earth fault in the supply then it could be simply the load causing it to trip.

So try a heavy current user in same socket like a kettle and see if that also causes it to trip.
 
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