No electricity but metre box has lights.

[Deleted User]

Hi all

Hopefully someone is up to help us out with this. We have a power cut and all the switches on the fuse box, apart from the one on the very left, is in its normal on position. The one on the very left doesn't stay on. Looks like the neighbours have power and no issues according to the grid website. Any ideas? I've tried turning each switch on one by one and the rest all goes to the on position no problem. One on the very left doesn't turn on however. 

Robin9

Ive tried turning each switch on one by one and the rest all goes to the on position no problem. One on the very left doesn't turn on however. 

Not sure that I understand what you have done.

Turn sll the switches off.

Turn the left one on. Does ot stay on ?

If yes turn the others on one by one

Jonboy_1984

Whatever item had a fault and caused it to trip must be still connected. As Robin says turn the six to the right of the tripped one to off, then turn on the left hand switch.

Then turn them on one by one until it reaches the faulty circuit and turns itself off. 

You can then unplug everything connected to that particular circuit, to test one by one and identify the device that is causing the problem.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

doesn't sound like a power cut, more like something has tripped, what was being used at time of trip?

fenwick458

sounds like a fault tripping the RCD.
theres an RCD in the middle of the consumer unit, if you press that button and it trips, that means there is power
there looks to be a single circuit between the middle RCD and the main switch ion the right, is it central heating? is that circuit working?
turn off all MCB's between the 2 RCD's and try to reset the RCD on the left, does it stay on?
info about consumer units if you don't know the difference between MCB, RCD and main switch

chris_n

The RCD on the left is tripped. Turn the 6 MCBs off. Reset the RCD then turn the MCBs bacl on one at a time. If the RCD trips again there is a fault on something connected to the last circuit you switched on.

[Deleted User]

Thanks all. It happened in the middle of the night so nothing new plugged in. When all the switches are down, the one on the left does switch and stay up. Switching it back on one by one, the electricity does come back on, but after a few minutes switches back off. Interestingly, when the left switch is down, and the rest are up, the boiler still works. Not too sure what that means. 

This morning, I switched them all off and on again and it tripped. I left one switch of each time and by the time I left the house, there was no tripping and the ground floor lights were the ones kept off. Will see when I get back from work. 

Bendy_House

Jackson, as said by others.

Is your CH still working? Then you still actually have power - your CH is on that separate switch (a MCB) in the middle, and is protected by its very own RCD).

The big switch on the very left is an RCD - a Residual Current Device - and is designed to detect very small leakages or imbalances of current, very tiny amounts (~30mA) so that it'll turn off before folk are 'cuted.

So, something in your house is 'leaking' slightly. Could be the oven, could be a PSU for a laptop, could be the washing machine, could be a light, could be pretty much anything.

So, turn the 6 MCBs to its right to their 'off' positions. (Most are labelled, but two are not - make a note of what these are during your test, and label them!) Now turn the RCD (the far-left) switch back up to 'on'.

Almost certainly it'll stay there, because you have removed all six circuits from it, so there is no more 'leaking'. Turn the RCDs back on one at a time. Chances are that one of them will make the RCD clunk off again - try not to jump...

Turn that 'triggering' MCB back 'off', and the RCD back on. It should stay on again.

Continue with the remaining MCBs so that - hopefully - 5 are now on, and your house can function.

Whichever MCB is 'triggering' the RCD now needs to be checked. If it's a ring main, then pull everything out of their sockets, and try turning it back on. Chances are it'll now stay on. In which case you now know that one of the items you have unplugged is the miscreant.

Let us know which circuit does the triggering, and we will lay bets on what the 'bad' object will be

Risteard

The last circuit switched on isn't necessarily the faulty one. A neutral/Earth fault could be on any of the protected circuits and only operate when there's sufficient load.

Section62

Deleted_User said:

Switching it back on one by one, the electricity does come back on, but after a few minutes switches back off.

This means whatever fault you have, it isn't an 'instant' one.

When you follow the advice to switch the MBCs on one by one you must wait several minutes to see whether the one you've just turned on is the circuit with the problem.  Ideally, turn the MCBs on one at a time, turning each one off again after you've given it the few minutes to cause the RCD to trip.

If you haven't already, I would unplug any 'sensitive' electrical equipment such as computers or TV's as repeated tripping/powering up could cause damage.

Deleted_User said:

Interestingly, when the left switch is down, and the rest are up, the boiler still works. Not too sure what that means.

It means the boiler circuit is protected by a separate RCD (the one on the right), so it will be unaffected if a fault on the rest of the house causes the other RCD (the one on the left) to trip.

Personally I'd also switch the boiler off (as per the 'sensitive' equipment above) until you figure out what the fault is, as some modern boilers don't like their power supply being messed with.

shiraz99

Deleted_User said:

Thanks all. It happened in the middle of the night so nothing new plugged in. When all the switches are down, the one on the left does switch and stay up. Switching it back on one by one, the electricity does come back on, but after a few minutes switches back off. Interestingly, when the left switch is down, and the rest are up, the boiler still works. Not too sure what that means. 

This morning, I switched them all off and on again and it tripped. I left one switch of each time and by the time I left the house, there was no tripping and the ground floor lights were the ones kept off. Will see when I get back from work. 

The boiler is on a separate circuit with it's own RCD.