Guess The Fault Competition

[securespark]

Today I visited a property.

The customer was complaining of voltage drop when a hefty appliance was used on the ground floor ring final.

He said that fluorescent lights would dim & appliances with motors would slow down.

I plugged my trusty Alphatek into the cooker control unit & it read 237V. Fair enough.

Then I asked the customer to plug a kettle into the GF RF & switch on.

Sure enough, the voltage plummeted to 199V.

What fault did I find?

 

[Spark123]

Loose tail?

 

[Lectrician]

Alphtek batteris flat

 

[RF Lighting]

4.0mm² T&E supplying the CU from the meter?

 

[hairyben]

Loose tail?

Or, given its GFR specific, dodgy busbar/feed connection/setup?

 

[tSpark]

aA 100kw Kettle with a 15,000litre capacity (big tea drinkers living downstairs)

 

[securespark]

What I actually found was two problems.

There's a bit of a clue....

 

[Spark123]

Two loose tails?

OK - maybe the sockets were wired off the lighting circuit and had a solid metal link in instead of a fuse?

 

[hairyben]

What I actually found was two problems.

There's a bit of a clue....

The kettle didn't boil and you couldn't have a cuppa?

 

[hairyben]

I'm thinking some weird F'ed up polarity reversal plus neutral fault somewhere that we'd never guess in a billion years.

I had a feeling this would be a double, the best ones always are.

 

[securespark]

Don't drink tea or coffee, so that's not it!!

 

[RF Lighting]

N>E fault on kettle

L&N reversed at incommer

Zs 3.29 ohms at the socket

 

[ricicle]

Problem with tails connection into main switch or main switch on to busbar/outgoing N link?? (wrong side of clamp/s)

 

[ricicle]

Lost Neutral - return path through high resistance earth? (no RCD)

 

[tSpark]

faulty PEN, obscure return path??? dodgy alphatek