New home - RCD tripping

Canucklehead

I would investigate the possible outside power points a bit further.
As said by uncle buck and others it's not how many things you have running ,it's a fault on something.
C.G.

OzBoy

Hi,
Don't know if you have the probelm sorted yet. When we moved into a brand new house 4 years ago, the same thing happened. The builder blamed us, or electrical equipment etc, and eventually did send an electrician to test the MCB. Their test equipment did not show up any fault (I witnessed the test) but the test is mainly to ensure that it does trip under certain conditions. Eventually, they agreed to replace the MCB with a branded one and the problem was resolved immediately. (The components within the 'fuse box' were cheap and non-branded, but the housing was branded to give the appearance that they had used quality parts. I suspect that the developer was unaware that their electrical sub-contractor had fitted cheap non-branded parts.
Hope this helps.
Paul

weekendwarrior

Computers and electric ovens often cause RCD's to trip because of leakage to earth.

It could well be something that is plugged into one of the sockets that is causing this nuisance tripping. It's hard to determine exactly what without the correct test equipment.

roger56

Simple suggestion, you mentioned that the tripping stopped when you unplugged the tumble dryer and video.

Disconnect these again and check the plug wiring is correct and secure:
L=Brown
N=Blue
E=Green/Yellow

If your previous house did not have an RCD in the consumer unit, such a fault may have gone un-noticed.

mikey-mike_2

One of the standard tests for a 30mA RCD is that it must NOT trip at 15mA.

If the RCD tests ok then as the tripping seems to be random I’d be inclined to look at things that come on randomly, main things that come to mind are boilers, fridges, freezers, immersion heaters ie, things with thermostats.

If it’s a split load board then running an extension lead from upstairs sockets would allow you to rule out appliances in a systematic way (split load = board with rcd for downstairs and external sockets & ordinary isolator for upstairs sockets & lights)

bunking_off

OzBoy wrote:

Hi,
Don't know if you have the probelm sorted yet. When we moved into a brand new house 4 years ago, the same thing happened. The builder blamed us, or electrical equipment etc, and eventually did send an electrician to test the MCB.

Ditto on that story. The electrician also mentioned to us that both the MCBs and RCDs were only really designed to trip for a limited number of times, after which they tended to get tempramental. There'd been earlier problems with our property (faulty wiring) which meant they'd all had a good workout. New MCB, RCD (and indeed new main box housing) fitted, never had a problem since - other than the usual for these things, conventional lightbulb blowing is sufficient to trip that lighting circuit - another good reason to use low energy bulbs.