Hi
Today I changed the consumer unit at a relatives house - It was "rewired" in the mid seventies, so a lot of the wiring was fairly shonky.
I was doing some renovation to the house and had to add a few sockets and wiring for a Spa Bath - as soon as I saw the existing consumer unit I pretty much condemned it. The entire houses plug sockets were running from a single 15 amp fuse, which apparently "blew all the time" and I noticed the holder was noticeably hot when I removed it!
Back to the important stuff - I checked all the existing wiring as best I could, and replaced around half of it where accessable. I connected this back up to the old CCU and it all worked fine.
Today I came to swapping the CCU for the new unit. Connections are as follows
100A main breaker
16A breaker running to cooker socket alone (Its only an electric oven, just over 10A draw thing not a proper electric hob)
32A breaker on the kitchen and utility socket ring main
16A breaker on rest of house sockets (8 sockets in total)
6A breaker on one lighting circuit
another 6A breaker on the other lighting circuit (this is as it was before exactly)
then, on the RCD protected bus bar (63A, 30mA) there is just a single 16 amp breaker running the Boiler, the shaver socket in the bathroom and spa bath. pump.
I have no problems at all with the sockets, but the RCD will trip whenever a light in the house is turned on, which, incidentally don't actually work
All I can really think of is that the lighting circuits are using earth as a neutral which is upsetting things The lights aren't even connected through the RCD but still trip it off.
All wiring on the output side of the RCD was installed by myself and has been double and triple checked, and doesn't even run near any lighting circuits.
The central heating was recently totally replaced, Perhaps the earths weren't re-connected?
I had to leave it as we had no light left - Will be back over tomorrow and replace as much of the rest of the houses wiring as possible, take the brute force approach to it as I really should have just done this in the first place, but along with fitting a bathroom and kitchen and re-plumbing the hot water it was the last of my priorities!
Thanks in advance for help from any sparkies with more experience than myself
Dave.
Today I changed the consumer unit at a relatives house - It was "rewired" in the mid seventies, so a lot of the wiring was fairly shonky.
I was doing some renovation to the house and had to add a few sockets and wiring for a Spa Bath - as soon as I saw the existing consumer unit I pretty much condemned it. The entire houses plug sockets were running from a single 15 amp fuse, which apparently "blew all the time" and I noticed the holder was noticeably hot when I removed it!
Back to the important stuff - I checked all the existing wiring as best I could, and replaced around half of it where accessable. I connected this back up to the old CCU and it all worked fine.
Today I came to swapping the CCU for the new unit. Connections are as follows
100A main breaker
16A breaker running to cooker socket alone (Its only an electric oven, just over 10A draw thing not a proper electric hob)
32A breaker on the kitchen and utility socket ring main
16A breaker on rest of house sockets (8 sockets in total)
6A breaker on one lighting circuit
another 6A breaker on the other lighting circuit (this is as it was before exactly)
then, on the RCD protected bus bar (63A, 30mA) there is just a single 16 amp breaker running the Boiler, the shaver socket in the bathroom and spa bath. pump.
I have no problems at all with the sockets, but the RCD will trip whenever a light in the house is turned on, which, incidentally don't actually work
All I can really think of is that the lighting circuits are using earth as a neutral which is upsetting things The lights aren't even connected through the RCD but still trip it off.
All wiring on the output side of the RCD was installed by myself and has been double and triple checked, and doesn't even run near any lighting circuits.
The central heating was recently totally replaced, Perhaps the earths weren't re-connected?
I had to leave it as we had no light left - Will be back over tomorrow and replace as much of the rest of the houses wiring as possible, take the brute force approach to it as I really should have just done this in the first place, but along with fitting a bathroom and kitchen and re-plumbing the hot water it was the last of my priorities!
Thanks in advance for help from any sparkies with more experience than myself
Dave.