Hi all,
Hoping someone can just give a little advice. Firstly I'm not overly versed with electrics, I know enough to the degree when something trips, how to reset the circuit breaker and if it keeps tripping to remove all possible variables (to unplug all appliances and retry etc) but beyond that my knowledge is very limited.
Problem
Last night we were inundated with ants.. seemingly sprawled over from next door neighbors property (as they mentioned they had an infestation a few days ago), my wife and I removed the ants and basically searched for gaps in the conservatory (skirting boards mainly) , gaps we did find we were using pollyfiller to close them.
Under the impression we had filled all gaps , I began to tidy away the aftermath of the ants and replacing furniture back to it's original position, my wife then made a decision which has now seemingly left us with no power in our downstairs plug sockets
One of the plug sockets (socket is head height) in the conservatory (brick built, secure in terms of weather proofing) had a fairly substantial gap in the brick work (about 5cm) from the top of the socket, I had been meaning to call someone in close the gap off professionally but never got around to it. She had decided to polly fill the gap herself..
Electrics tripped immediately.
When looking at the breaker, the flipswitch that was in the "off" position was indeed for the downstairs plug sockets. All other switches were still set to the "on" position.
Tried to flip the "downstairs plugsocket's" breaker switch to on, but doing so flips the main breaker to "off".
So i did the obligatory, turn everything off, unplug ALL appliances downstairs and in the
conservatory. Again try to flip the "downstairs plugsockets" breaker to on and main breaker trips
I know the cause of the initial trip and the persistent cause (being probably the mass blobs of pollyfiller that my wife has generously fed into the gap in the wall and has probably landed on back of the switch/wiring)
My question being, will this potentially be a costly fix as we need to call out a leccy and would rather have some further insight before being handed a bill that we have no idea whether it's a reasonable rate or not.
Any advice/info would be greatly appreciated.
(and I've hid the pollyfiller from the wife)
Hoping someone can just give a little advice. Firstly I'm not overly versed with electrics, I know enough to the degree when something trips, how to reset the circuit breaker and if it keeps tripping to remove all possible variables (to unplug all appliances and retry etc) but beyond that my knowledge is very limited.
Problem
Last night we were inundated with ants.. seemingly sprawled over from next door neighbors property (as they mentioned they had an infestation a few days ago), my wife and I removed the ants and basically searched for gaps in the conservatory (skirting boards mainly) , gaps we did find we were using pollyfiller to close them.
Under the impression we had filled all gaps , I began to tidy away the aftermath of the ants and replacing furniture back to it's original position, my wife then made a decision which has now seemingly left us with no power in our downstairs plug sockets
One of the plug sockets (socket is head height) in the conservatory (brick built, secure in terms of weather proofing) had a fairly substantial gap in the brick work (about 5cm) from the top of the socket, I had been meaning to call someone in close the gap off professionally but never got around to it. She had decided to polly fill the gap herself..
Electrics tripped immediately.
When looking at the breaker, the flipswitch that was in the "off" position was indeed for the downstairs plug sockets. All other switches were still set to the "on" position.
Tried to flip the "downstairs plugsocket's" breaker switch to on, but doing so flips the main breaker to "off".
So i did the obligatory, turn everything off, unplug ALL appliances downstairs and in the
conservatory. Again try to flip the "downstairs plugsockets" breaker to on and main breaker trips
I know the cause of the initial trip and the persistent cause (being probably the mass blobs of pollyfiller that my wife has generously fed into the gap in the wall and has probably landed on back of the switch/wiring)
My question being, will this potentially be a costly fix as we need to call out a leccy and would rather have some further insight before being handed a bill that we have no idea whether it's a reasonable rate or not.
Any advice/info would be greatly appreciated.
(and I've hid the pollyfiller from the wife)
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