Advice please fellas

[oharaf]

A colleague phoned me this morning saying she had turned her standard lamp on, on saturday, when she came back the light had gone off and 3 double sockets had stopped working.

She is terrified of electricty so I called over today, anyway on inspection the MCB had tripped, good news that the protective device was operating, however I removed the plugin MCB from the wylex CU (oldish looking)

Checked the rating and it was a 15A, I traced the circuit and I know it is a radial, supplying only these three double sockets.

Each socket had one of those "glade pluggin" things, she also had one standard lamp, and uses one double socket for hair straighteners and hair dryer.

All the connections appear to be sound (if somewhat messy), I haven't yet carried out Ins/res, continuity or polarity tests as I need to borrow a mates meter. (I'm still training)

Any how, because I know that the circuit is definitely a radial, should my first course of action be to replace the 15A MCB with a 20A MCB?

The MCB is BS3871 15A but has printed on the back 15/30A

Obviously I will carryout the neccessary tests, but looking for advice/opinion from the seasoned boys, cheers

 

[JohnD]

quite possibly it was a surge caused by the bulb blowing

If so, fitting a CFL (energy saving bulb) will prevent it happening again.

 

[oharaf]

Hi JohnD, that was my initial thought before arriving, however got there and she already had an energy efficient bulb in, that was in good working order, she had not replaced it.

Could the Energy efficient bulb a produced a sufficiently large back EMF to trip the MCB??

What about changing the MCB to 20A?

 

[JohnD]

no

there must be some other cause, you will have to find it.

Perhaps a nail through a cable, or a water leak, or mouse has gnawed them.

 

[oharaf]

cheers JohnD

do some more testing and inspecting this weekend then!!!

 

[plugwash]

There is a lot of electronics in the base of an energy saving bulb and given the price they sell at that electronics must be cheaply made. It wouldn't surprise me too much if one of them failed short. Glade plugins also wouldn't surprise me if they failed short.

could also be a conductor damaged at the terminations so a full inspection of all connections on the circuit is in order. Nail through a cable is possible but unlikely IMO.

inspect and test the circuit and PAT test any equipment that was plugged in to the circuit at the time to make sure everything is ok but don't be at all surprised if you can't find anything wrong.

 

[electrospark]

I have heard also that air freshner plug ins can catch fire. I don't know this for sure but like plugwash said they could be a likely cause of the fault. May be worth a closer look...