Electric keeps tripping - possibly found source

Lorian

Any sockets or cables outside that could have got rain ingress?

Lorian

Also if it tripping frequently you can speed up investigation a bit by switching the circuits all off on the board and turn them on just one at a time till you find which ring/radial has the issue. There is one slight drawback in this approach if it's several devices compounding to trip it.

silvercar

Lorian said:

Also if it tripping frequently you can speed up investigation a bit by switching the circuits all off on the board and turn them on just one at a time till you find which ring/radial has the issue. There is one slight drawback in this approach if it's several devices compounding to trip it.

It’s only one RCD that is tripping. Unfortunately it is the one that serves most of the house!

Lorian

Yes but you can still turn the rings/radials off to prove which one the problem is on. Some circuits won't be on the RCD like the lighting so you can ignore them.

And any outside sockets? They would need checking for water.

victor2

I once had the RCD trip on the ring main for the whole house, even with nothing plugged in. It was a very low resistance between neutral and earth. Took me hours to find it, but eventually got both ends of a cable between two sockets disconnected with an almost short on it. It ran under a concrete floor, so had to be replaced by one using an alternative route. Never found out what caused the problem, but thought that maybe mice had somehow got in there and chewed the cable. 

theoretica

Would be worth turning everything off overnight (even fridge freezer - it will be fine with the door shut) to test if it might be the wiring and not something plugged in after all.

FFHillbilly

silvercar said:

Lorian said:

Also if it tripping frequently you can speed up investigation a bit by switching the circuits all off on the board and turn them on just one at a time till you find which ring/radial has the issue. There is one slight drawback in this approach if it's several devices compounding to trip it.

It’s only one RCD that is tripping. Unfortunately it is the one that serves most of the house!

how many circuits on the RCD? what type of consumer unit is it? 

silvercar

Lorian said:

Yes but you can still turn the rings/radials off to prove which one the problem is on. Some circuits won't be on the RCD like the lighting so you can ignore them.

And any outside sockets? They would need checking for water.

Maybe I’m describing it wrong.

The board has two halves, lights one side and everything else on the other. One of the flippy switches on the “other side” flips. It’s the one that guards most of the ground floor electrics.

GDB2222

silvercar said:

Lorian said:

Yes but you can still turn the rings/radials off to prove which one the problem is on. Some circuits won't be on the RCD like the lighting so you can ignore them.

And any outside sockets? They would need checking for water.

Maybe I’m describing it wrong.

The board has two halves, lights one side and everything else on the other. One of the flippy switches on the “other side” flips. It’s the one that guards most of the ground floor electrics.

Unfortunately, they are all flippy switches, so it is not clear whether it’s an mcb or rcd that is tripping.  A photo would be nice, but it sounds like your consumer unit has lots of mcbs but only two RCDs.  

So, is it one of the two RCDs that is tripping?

silvercar

Gone again!