Meter tripping after re wire.

[Whippet]

We had our house re wired last July by a firm who had opened a shop locally.

Earlier this year, one of the switches tripped. I just thought that it may be something to do with a kettle which we had recently bought.
It only happened another twice over the months.
Then, last week, the meter tripped, and kept on tripping - sometimes just after a few seconds, other times after several minutes.
Then suddenly, all was OK again.
We have a double socket, so the kettle and the cooker were affected.
Today, I was on the computer, and it went dead.
I discovered that my husband's stair lift trip switch, had also cut off.
I went to check, and it was the same switch which had tripped again.
So those four things are all connected somewhere.
(I don't have a clue about electrics).

On the control board, it is the far left hand side switch which trips. A test button is above it.
When the switch is in the on position, it says - 1.on, on the lower side of it.
Under the switch is a square with 14 stamped on it. And under that is a square with a label in it, which reads - RCD.

Now, my problem is that the shop has closed, and the owner has vanished.

What should I do? Is this safe, or are we liable to go up in flames?

Advice would be gratefully received.

 

[pjcomp]

You're unlikely to go up in flames - the RCD is tripping to prevent that happening. The most likely cause of the RCD tripping is a faulty appliance - team irons are common culprits.

The RCD is actually there to protect several circuits, so the problem could be on one of several. At the moment it sounds as if you've got what we call an intermittent fault - unless you can make it happen to order by performing a particular action, you will need to work through a process of elimination to find the source of the problem.

You probably need to get in someone who's got some fault-finding experience to try to track it down.

 

[RF Lighting]

If the stairlift had tripped as well then I'd say that that would be my first suspect.

Hopefully it isn't a wiring fault if you have recently had your house rewired (assuming they did a half decent job of it)

 

[ColJack]

last week?
was that the day that it rained heavy?

I'm going on a limb here and saying it's an outside light / socket with water in it..

 

[Whippet]

Thank you all for your advice.

A friend had said that it may be our rapid boil kettle which was causing the problem. We got that earlier this year, and we can't recall the electric going off prior to that.
So, today, we went out and bought a cheap kettle.

As it happens - the stair lift was installed about last December. So, that could be a possible suspect, too.

I am sure it wasn't raining the day we had all the trouble, ColJack.
We do have an outside light, however. That has been up about 20 years.

It hasn't tripped again - yet. So I shall wait and see what happens now we have changed the kettle.

I shall keep you posted of any developments.