Electrics nightmare!

[redoaks]

Please can someone help!
We have recently moved into our house and have been doing it all up, just skimmed all the walls and painted everywhere and the electrics have gone mad! Suddenly the sockets all stopped working and the upstairs lighting and we have no idea why! The only working socket is the cooker which runs off a separate circuit (apparently!). An electrician has been round and he can't find the problem either. We have checked every socket, every light fitting, every wire and junction box. We had a new distribution box fitted when we moved in and it was all fine until a few weeks ago.
Does anyone have any ideas!?!? We really don't want to re-wire!
Thanks

 

[sparkyspike]

One idea would be to get another electrician round. There's nothing to go on here - did the electrician give you any clues at all as to what the fault was? Is the cooker on a sub main, or separate fuse box to the rest of the house?

 

[kkynaston]

Provide us with some photos of the fusebox and meter

 

[redoaks]

The electrician just said he was baffled! He thinks we have a short somewhere but we can't find where. The cooker is wired to the same distribution box to the rest of the house. We thought it was a fault with the box, that maybe one of the RCD's were blown, but the electrician put them all on the same RCD and it still tripped off!

 

[sparkyspike]

Are all the breakers (mcbs) controlled from one RCD? Except for the cooker maybe? Do you have documentation for the new fusebox?

 

[redoaks]

They are at the moment as the electrician didn't move it all back after he tested if the box was faulty. He has all the documentation I think, he hasn't given any to us.

 

[sparkyspike]

A photo of the fusebox would be really helpful. Or at least a list of devices, say, from left to right.

 

[redoaks]

OK, I'll take a photo tonight and post tomorrow. Thanks!

 

[mattylad]

Surely he ought to be taking everything off & only trying one circuit at a time till the RCD goes off ?

Or even better actually testing each circuit.

You say you plastered, did this involve putting up some new plasterboard first? could be a screw/nail through cable.
OR damp in the sockets?

 

[SparkyNinja]

He has all the documentation I think, he hasn't given any to us.

Has he told you there is documentation himself?

Make sure you get a pic of the labels for the circuits, and anywhere inparticular that you have done some work.

 

[redoaks]

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for all your suggestions, the electrician came back on saturday and managed to find the problem! It was all to do with the new electrics from the new boiler we've had fitted. The old wires were all over heating and had welded together. This has all been sorted with no re-plastering!

Very happy!