Economy 7 trips circuit breaker each night when cheap rate kicks in

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Economy 7 system. New distribution board. Plumber has changed the fitting on the tank twice. He says it’s the electrics and blames the electrician. The electrician says electrics are fine and it’s the plumbers fault. Result remains I can’t heat my water on a cheap rate overnight and I have paid two tradesmen with no resolution. Where do I go from here?
 
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Presume he has changed the bottom?? element that the Economy 7 power supplies, if so I would temporarily connect it to the upper element which presumably isn't tripping and see if problem still persists.
 
What is printed on the breaker that trips? All the letters and numbers please.

Some photos of the consumer unit with the door open would help. Include the meter, and the cables to and around the Consumer Unit(s) and the timer if separate.

Switch off (at the wall) every heater and immersion that is fed from the off-peak supply and the trip will probably not occur.

Then leave them all switched off except the lower immersion heater. This will verify where the fault lies.

An error may have been made by the plumber, but a competent electrician should be able to trace and rectify it.

How long did the electrician take, and what do you know about her qualifications? Which Competent Person Scheme is he a member of? Did they test the electrical installation before fitting the new Consumer Unit?
 
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I really can't imagine a fault which trips the electrics being down to the plumber. A trip will normally trip due to one of three things, the surge being too high, unlikely with an element, the long term current use being too high, or the imbalance being too high. In my house are three are built into the same device, some homes the imbalance is a separate device to magnetic and thermal overload trip.

We have two main tools to check what has happened, the ammeter, normally a clip on type is used, and the insulation tester normally tests at 500 volt, we also have the RCD tester.

We are working with AC, so we have capacitive and inductive linking, and the insulation tester uses DC, so not a fool proof test, and the ammeter and RCD test needs power, so unless the electrician comes at the off peak times, it is hard to do a full test.

Economy 7 is a tariff not a system, when it first came out we had the white meter, and the immersion heater used for off peak was completely independent from any 24/7 heater. But people wanted to use washing machines and tumble driers etc on the off peak, so the system was changed, often it did have a radio 4 time corrected clock to trigger devices, but it was a trigger wire, or some times user set time clock to turn on the device.

We had a whole range of timers 1661757347068.png each one slightly different, some with one supply, some with two, and one has to read carefully the instructions.

When I worked on Economy 7 the supply was normally taken to a fuse box, and there was no RCD protection, even when the main fuse box was changed for a consumer unit, often the off peak still used the old fuse box. I would think today the off peak does have RCD protection, and one thing I noted with my own fuse boxes (with MCB's fitted instead of fuses) was turn on the main isolator and often the RCD would trip, and I had to turn off the MCB's first then reset the RCD and then turn on the MCB's one at a time, but testing for earth leakage it showed no fault.

I see no reason why the inrush should trip the RCD, but I know it did, I can take a guess as to why, but it is only a guess, I considered all sorts, there is the X-pole RCD which it claims trips 80 - 100% rather than 50 - 100% and has some software to stop spikes tripping it, and also auto resetting now no longer allowed, but when I moved I went from 2 RCD to 14 RCBO's so each circuit is independent, and to date all trips have been due to genuine faults.

But it was very intermittent when the old system tripped, I could go two years with no trip, then have 5 in two weeks, nothing changed and then another 2 years fault free, so my thoughts are spikes on the supply, and now with a SPD fitted that is less likely anyway.

I have had trips, tested the RCD which showed A1, and to make the customer think I have done something changed the RCD anyway, and faults stopped. Which seems to point to spikes upsetting some RCD's. It seems not all RCD's are equal, but it is simple enough for the electrician to work out if some thing he needs to do, or the plumber, if the element passes the insulation resistance test, then the electrician needs to correct any fault, and if it fails the plumber needs to change it, however the electrician would say the element is faulty and needs changing, not simply down to the plumber.

So some thing missed from the tale.
 
What is the problem?? No power to the bottom element or RCCB trip??
 
Rccb trips when cheap rate water heater kicks in early hours of the morning.
 
If all was good before, it’s down to your spark who changed the consumer unit to locate the fault. Unless it’s a sheer coincidence that the heating element failed, that has also been changed twice is now causing it to fault.
 
You would think so. He won’t come back as he says it’s nothing to do with him.
 

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