so I've been called out to a job this morning and what's been happening is so
the RCD was tripping and causing everything here to trip and lose all the sockets
Etc and this board has only upgrade upgraded uh less than a year ago it certainly wouldn't have
been my choice to have well would have been fitting our RCBOs but anyway so basically
um I've located the fault to here simply by turning all the all of the breakers off and
then turn them on one by one and it turns out that it's the socket one that's at fault what I've done
I turned everything back on and I went around with my tester and I checked every socket and
I've worked out there's a ring circuit on the end of the bungalow and it's that ring that the faulty
sockets that these this ring is those sockets down there I can only locate about six or seven sockets
it's in a bedroom with built-in wardrobes Etc but there's nothing plugged into them so it shouldn't
be too difficult to get some from back working again I've also confirmed it is a ring well I've
confirmed it's a ring on the neutral and the line conductors not the earth I've left them I've left
them in for the moment and yes it's a ring as we're in about 1.4 Ohms on each on each leg so
that's okay and so then I did an insulation resistance test let's just go on to this one
here and so I just did insulation resistance test between line and an earth as you can see it's it
was reading when I did the initial test everything was all connected and everything like that but
what I've since done I've been down to one of the furthest sockets and I've physically disconnected
it so now I know that the fault is on this side of the ring circuit and then if I go onto this one
I'll do a test and again I'm doing it one-handed so it's not great [Music]
and that's reading 321 Megohms so at the moment this side is all okay this side is
the at fault so I don't know where the fault is so we'll just go down to the other end
this is one of the sockets that's on that ring circuit and as you can see ignoring the the green
goo on it for now as you can see what I've done I've split it up here and so that's basically
turned the ring circuit into two radial circuits up to this point here the leg of the ring that
hasn't got the fault on I'm now going to get that live and I'll come back to this one to
work out which one is the live one and then I'll be able to work my way around all of the different
sockets until I can work out or roughly locate where the fault is okay so what I've just done
I've connected the leg of the ring that had no fault on it I've connected that back up powered
that back out and then I've come to this socket here which is the one that I've been working
on is the furthest one that I've seen and with my testers I worked out which one was was live
because it is a ring and then I've connected them back up and so this side isn't isn't live but the
um but this this socket is now live so just to confirm that carefully
you can say it's just coming on there again in this room
we have a socket down here and we have a socket over there and neither of these ones are working
so that tells me that's the faulty leg shall we say and then if we come back into this room
there's a socket here and a socket over there and as you can see this one is now working
so I'll unplug that
and then we're coming to this room there's a socket behind here and behind the bed
and again this one is working
so at the moment so we've got this room that room and that room for that remember three
bedrooms effectively they are on the leg of the ring circuit that are now working and so
basically what I need to do now is from this point here I need to go across to this one
because logically it's going to be connected to this one and it'll come across down to this one
so somewhere between that socket this socket and back to the board is going to be the fault
one of the problems we do have access to this socket this is a built-in cupboard so that's
going to be awkward to do this one shouldn't be too bad so I'll probably tackle that one as well
if we go back to here we've also got quite a considerable amount the green goo where the cables
were melting where the PVC obviously it melts and this green goo comes out so that is going to
probably potentially require a rewire now it does look quite bad that's not necessarily what the
fault is I'm just going to see what we can do to try to get everything working again so just to say
what we've done we've connected this leg back on and going back to that socket that we've
just been to so that's live and then the left hand side of the ring is all working so the
two bedrooms are working um and only half the sockets in the main bedroom that we've just
been in are working but obviously this side has been left disconnected so if I'm going to leave
it like that for the time being I would need to replace this 32 amp trip with a 16 or a 20 amp
just because it's on it's now not a ring circuit it's a radial circuit that is something we do
need to look at doing now one of the things I can confirm these were put in only a year ago and as
you can see we've got all new cable in here I've got the old red wires there but somehow somewhere
there's going to be connection there's going to be joint boxes up in the roof because obviously
it's the original wiring that's in and these have all been connected to new ones so that's going to
be something I'm going to have to work out as you can look here there's definitely signs of
the green goo the residue there that's coming out it doesn't seem appear to be anything bad on that
one but it's going to be something that we're going to have to do look out now another thing
is a three-phase supply coming in another thing I will say is that my um it was my dad actually
wired this Bungalow up is 78 now and I think he wired this up it was his first house that
he ever wired up and he was about 20 I think that he did it all it's not his house it was for for
one of his customers and it doesn't look and they have lived in it ever since and my dad's always
maintained this house but not for the last year or so and he certainly didn't do we haven't put
these boards in so so it looks like it is going to potential potentially need a partial rewire
um if not I thought we were wondered I just don't know I mean it just doesn't
look in great condition but I'll be able to tell more when I go up into the roof so
that should be okay when we do that what we've done um because there was a fault and the fault
was on this ring circuit we've turned this circuit now into a radial circuit so now that's turned on
we've got this bedroom sockets all working again we've got this bedroom sockets all working again
and we've got that one working but this one one down there and this one isn't working so for now
I've just put the um an extension lead across and so at least the bedside lamp is working
yep so that's now working got rid of the fault got the electrics all working again
and again because it was a on one of these stupid boards that I've got the
RCD controlling all these sockets or all of the circuits you lose everything so the
customer's happy now that things are working again apart from like I said the two sockets