Sounds significant to me. I would expect a fan heater to simply slow down and stop if the power were to go away.
Are you saying you've seen this from multiple "heat coil" devices?
Overcurrent fault on socket ring
- Thread starter loply
- Start date
Sounds significant to me. I would expect a fan heater to simply slow down and stop if the power were to go away.
Are you saying you've seen this from multiple "heat coil" devices?
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I wonder why it's only affecting that one circuit in the garage.
Naz - you've had a couple of days to answer that - surely you must have remembered by now when you went there and did some testing?
I mean - you did do that, right? Surely you wouldn't have advised someone to make a change to a protective device that might render their installation lethally dangerous if the change were unsuitable without doing that, right?
Or are you pretending that if you ignore the question you can equally successfully pretend that the penny has not dropped for you?
I am going to ignore ANYTHING you say! I think more and more people reading your **** will realise that and eventually you end up ....
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He makes a fair point though
Ignore away, old bean - it won't make you any less ignorant, any less incompetent or any less unfit to give people advice.
I really don't think you get it - I really think you think I said what I did to score points, and that you genuinely have no idea that if the OP had followed your advice to just stick in a C type breaker someone could have been killed as a result.
Yeah, I have seen it from two electric heaters I have in there, and also from a paint stripper gun. When the fault occurs there's an audible pop (fairly loud) and a flash from the heating coil.
Almost seems like there's been a surge or something...
But no problems with anything else in the house?
No problems at all elsewhere in the house.
I do occasionally grind aluminium and carbon fibre (both conductive obviously), but, I've checked inside the CU and several sockets and they were not full of dust by any stretch.
I haven't tried any of the devices in the house, but, at least one of them is brand new (I bought a new electric heater after mistakenly thinking it was faulty), so I'm pretty sure it's nothing to do with the devices themselves.
In the meantime to be safe I'm leaving the garage isolated from the house CU when I'm not using it.
I guess tomorrow night I will disconnect half of the sockets in the ring and see if the problem persists... that way I should be able to narrow it down to one half of the wiring I guess...
I do occasionally grind aluminium and carbon fibre (both conductive obviously), but, I've checked inside the CU and several sockets and they were not full of dust by any stretch.
I haven't tried any of the devices in the house, but, at least one of them is brand new (I bought a new electric heater after mistakenly thinking it was faulty), so I'm pretty sure it's nothing to do with the devices themselves.
In the meantime to be safe I'm leaving the garage isolated from the house CU when I'm not using it.
I guess tomorrow night I will disconnect half of the sockets in the ring and see if the problem persists... that way I should be able to narrow it down to one half of the wiring I guess...
When I read about the pops I wondered if a dodgy neutral might be causing overvoltage, but then it wouldn't be just the one circuit in the garage exhibiting problems.
I have occasional "disagreements" with BAS - but he's not talking **** here. He is completely correct that it is dangerous to swap a type B breaker out for a type C without doing the relevant checks to ensure that the fault impedance is sufficiently low for it to be safe.
Why ? The tripping curve for a type C is such that it needs a LOT more current to guarantee tripping, especially meeting the disconnection time limits needed to comply with regs. There is a risk that the fault impedance is such that a type C breaker might not trip in a timely manner under fault/overload conditions, overloading the wiring due to passing more current than the wiring is rated for.
If there was a loose neutral somewhere in the garage circuit, could that not cause an over-voltage which is contained therein?
I'm not understanding how a poor neutral connection could trip the breaker though?
Hi everyone, just an update on this, I rewired the CU to turn the ring into a radial circuit. I first wired up just one socket to eliminate the CU or any other factors, then tried connecting different runs of sockets in turn. I've now narrowed the fault down to just two particular sockets which, if left out, stops the problem occuring.
I'm going to pull the wiring out of the trunking and inspect it to those sockets tomorrow, I can't imagine how the wiring is damaged such that L&N are shorting without the earth getting some current (to trip the RCD), but I suppose that must be what's happening...
I'm going to pull the wiring out of the trunking and inspect it to those sockets tomorrow, I can't imagine how the wiring is damaged such that L&N are shorting without the earth getting some current (to trip the RCD), but I suppose that must be what's happening...
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