Ask the Question

dashers · Joined: 13 Jul 2007 Posts: 8 Location: Unknown

My RCD keeps tripping randomly. It used to be weeks between trips, but currently it's going twice a day.

It also used to be triggered by plugging my laptop's AC adapter in; but now it's pretty much anything electrical (even items without an earth) that get switched on. Such as the TV. Although, not always, it seems 50/50 whether the power will go when the switch is flicked...

I've done the obvious and disconnected everything, and tried to isolate what and where the problem occurs, but no, it's everywhere. But not being an electrician I've got rather stuck.

The whole house was re-wired a couple of years ago, by an expensive company that has since gone bust. It was all signed off at the time. The problem has been apparent since then (although now much worse). I had an electrician in a while ago to install a new socket and asked him to RAMP test, and everything tripped as expected and not early.

My old man is also an engineer, although this sort of thing isn't his area; still we monitored the mains with some stupidly expensive kit that monitors for quality, leakages and so on and couldn't pick up anything when it tripped.

The fuseboard and rcd is a Proteus M3 unit, which I get the impression from several searches on the net aren't any good.

Can anybody suggest where to go from here? Should I just give up and pay out for somebody to swap out the kit with something, hopefully, more reliable. If so, anybody know a decent electrician in North East Somerset?

Thanks for anything anybody can suggest.

vince knight · Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:54 pm Post subject:

The best thing would be to get a good electrician to do an insulation resistance test on the cables in the house to see if every thing is as it should be.
You only have to have one crushed cable under a floor for example to cause nusance tripping.

Vince

dashers · Joined: 13 Jul 2007 Posts: 8 Location: Unknown

Turns out this was down to a faulty RCD. The second one we had, as the first was extremely faulty.

Had it swapped out sometime ago and have had a problem since.