The electrics smell

lonestarfan

My house has a modern RCD board with trip switches which trip for example if a lightbulb pops etc.
In my airing cupboard in my bathroom I have a socket wihich is for the shower and for a small heating pipe in the bottom of the airing cupaboard. The purpose of the heating pipe is so that in the winter it will warm my airing cupboard as it no longer has a heated water tank in there since I had a combi boiler installed.
The problem which is making me worry is that the thick grey wiring into the socket smells fishy. I have heard of this before but can't recall what it means.
I am afraid that my electrics may be suspect and blow up but my little knowledge makes me think that the trip board will protect me?. What does this smell mean and can anyone advise me what they did about it and if I have to get someone in to fix it , what are they fixing and how much is it likely to cost?
Many thanks.

keystone

The fishy smell is the pong given off by the outer on older wiring that is overheating. The first thing to address is why is it over heating? You may well need a sparks to test properly.

Cheers

Yooj_2

If you have an electric shower, dependent upon the kW rating of the shower...but as an example, take a 7.2kW shower, then this will draw in the region of 31 amps...if this shower was on a normal plug, which is rated at 20A, but can have a maximum fuse rating for a BS1362 fuse of 13A.

Why does this not blow the fuse you might ask....well as 30 or so amps is only around 2.5 times the full load current of the 13A fuse, and therefore the overcurrent characteristics of a BS1362 fuse will allow this over-current for an amount of time, dependent upon the level of over-current. (Apologies, but I do not have the curves to hand at the moment, and thus can not give you exact numbers).

Now, if your socket in the airing cupboard is on the socket ring, this will likely be rated at 32A, and thus again, if your shower is 7.2kW, the the 31 or so amps drawn will not trip the MCB.

I would say that you could well be smelling the plug/socket overheating due to being periodically exposed to overcurrents, and thus this does sound like a potentially very dangerous situation, and I would suggest that you do not use the shower until you get it checked out.

Furthermore, if you do have a 7.2kW shower, then this should be run in 6mm cable, and it should have a double-pole isolator and also have it's own MCB in your consumer unit and certainly not be run from a socket circuit, for exactly the reasons you are seeing.

Most electric showers these days require 10mm cable, and this is normally installed as a matter of course.

Yooj

pimento

It's bakelite that smells like fish when it overheats.