Toaster blew half of my electrics

Legacy_user

My toaster - 18 months old, blew half the electrics to my home when it finished cooking toast. Only the cooker, hallway/landing and bedrooms still have power. Heating controls out, all ceiling lights in lounge/kitchen and all power sockets there gone

At least 3 switches on the circuit board have gone. All next to each other.

Any reason why this has happened and the best ways of solving this? If I have to get a sparky out, a rough idea of cost?

Main concern is fridge freezer as full

force_ten

ScarletMarble wrote: »

My toaster - 18 months old, blew half the electrics to my home when it finished cooking toast. Only the cooker, hallway/landing and bedrooms still have power. Heating controls out, all ceiling lights in lounge/kitchen and all power sockets there gone

At least 3 switches on the circuit board have gone. All next to each other.

Any reason why this has happened and the best ways of solving this? If I have to get a sparky out, a rough idea of cost?

Main concern is fridge freezer as full

unplug the toaster and reset the trip switches and that should be it job done

J_B

force_ten wrote: »

unplug the toaster and reset the trip switches and that should be it job done

+1

Then buy a new toaster!!

System

Done that and still no leccy!

Strider590

ScarletMarble wrote: »

My toaster - 18 months old, blew half the electrics to my home when it finished cooking toast.

Has it occured to you that when you turn off the supply to the toaster, it pops up?

This might not have been the toasters fault at all. Toasters do like to trip circuit breakers, BUT usually only when some pillock has been jabbing a knife into them OR sometimes with age, the elements can bend/twist and come into contact with eachother.

A single fault shouldn't take out more than one of the smaller circuit breakers. It might take out the main one, but that would cut everything, typically all the lights or all the sockets.
So this could indicate an earthing problem somewhere.

Did anything else happen at the same time? Did you switch something else on? Was anyone else in the house? were they doing something? had the heating just flipped on? anything?

ScarletMarble wrote: »

Done that and still no leccy!

Are all the switches in the UP position?

Do they stay there?

Turn everything off before resetting them, basically anything on those circuits should be in the off position or unplugged.
Once it's working, gradually go around turning things back on and see if any of them cause a problem.

force_ten

ScarletMarble wrote: »

Done that and still no leccy!

are all the switches and RCD,s on the fuse board reset and staying on ?

if the wiring had a fault on it then the switches on the fuse board would re trip as soon as you tried to reset them

I would say if you have no power then something on the board has not reset

paddyrg

If resetting the breakers isn't bringing power back, you have a bigger problem, time to call the leccy company.

Toaster may have been a symptom, not a cause.

paulsad

Run an extension lead from upstairs to your fridge/freezer in the interim whilst you get the downstairs ring checked for earthing faults - another cause can be rodent damage to wiring.

Ant555

My electric switches are in two banks at the board

On the left there is a big switch for everything and then a breaker that controls the next few fuses followed by another breaker that controls the fuses after that.

When our toaster went pop, it not only tripped the switch for the circuit but it also tripped the bigger one to the left of it as well. (Not the one that turns everything off but the one for that bank)

Excuse me if the names of the things are incorrect but I hope you get my drift.

Hope this helps.

One more thing,you might already have fathomed this out and its probably standard but on my fuse board Red means ON (I guess its danger!) and green means off (probably means its safe to work on).

System

Sorry about that.

OK the RCD covering the lights and power sockets in kitchen/lounge and heating needed to be reset. Pressed the button. The RCD covering cooker, immersion heater, doorbell and lights/power sockets on bedrooms, bathroom, hall/stairs. Smoke detectors and landing lights are on another RCD.

Funnily enough, my parents' kettle tripped the electrics in their home at 11am! Got a text from Dad when I was in Argos buying my toaster to pick up a kettle!

I did test the fuse in the toaster in another kitchen gadget and it was fine.

Strider590

Button? It's normally an up/down switch....

The button is normally for testing them.

Did your parents kettle trip the electrics? or did the kettle just turn (click) off because the power went off? (as most of them do)