Any sparkies out there?
When we have washing machine and dryer on and then sometimes oven and kettle (ok ok sounds like a lot) and the main fuse trips (in the shared/communal fuse box) and everything shuts down. Is there anything I can do about it as we tank leccy pretty hard and it happens constantly (well, about once a week)
We had a similar issue a while back. We had an ancient fuse box and ended up replacing the whole thing. Didn’t actually cost that much and have had no fuse issues since. I rinse electric hard, we have a crap tin of reptiles etc
we had a shower that kept tripping the fuse box. We had to get a thicker wire that could handle the higher voltage it needed.
Not much you could probably do other then trying to not use everything at once. And be a bit more conscious of what load you’re placing on the circuit that trips. Kettles normally pull a lot of current. If possible place the load on another circuit by plugging stuff in elsewhere.
Might be the rating of the appliances? I had an iron that was something mental like 3500W that tripped the fusebox every time we used it. Just got a different iron and it was fine. Might be cheaper than a new fusebox?
What type of fuses are they? Wired or wylex plug in jobbies? Do you have a combination of RCD and MCB or none? If it’s all on the one fuse thats one issue, ideally your kitchen should be on its own circuit 32a to cover the white goods oven etc, if it just downstairs sockets or all sockets for the house in a fuse then you will need to get a spark in to run some new cable. It may be that the fuse rating is too low but I wouldn’t recommend just upping it to stop it from tripping as the cable might not be the correct rating and that nuisance tripping might turn into a house fire, there can be many reasons and conditions for a fault knocking the whole house off.
Sometimes with age in ovens/cookers the elements expand with heat and cool and contract, resulting in low earth fault currents which can cause rcds to trip.
It may even be a terminal screw in a plug or socket that’s loose.
Either way whenever you can it’d be best to get a recommended spark in to explain the problem and show the fault, look at options.
In the meantime it’s a case of keeping an eye on what’s been used. Turn one thing off for another.
Fuses tripping is a safety feature but there’s always the chance that it can knacker technology etc.
I’m not a time served spark btw Just a meter engineer you pick things up.
Spanky, I’m not quite sure that it’s still relevant to you, but when I’ve been looking for electrician, because of some issues which I had with my electrical system, I’ve called this emergency electrician company, which is based in Gloucester, as I know. What I can say for sure - they know for sure what they do, and can accomplish any hard work for the shortest period of time. I’m glad I could find them.
Yep, what’s needed after six months is an emergency sparky in (I think?) a different country…
