Lost Neutral in Spur Plug Socket Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[Vaisala]

Hi all,

Hope you can help? I had an electrician around yesterday to look at a plug socket that just stopped working. He put his test meter in and confirmed it was a lost neutral? He asked if any other plugs had stopped working and that haven't. The plug socket is a spur off another feed he says, but doesn't know how to fix it? We have had no other electrical work carried out, all plug sockets are fine apart from this particular one. I'm at a loss

Regards
Steve

[Mr White]

If he is an electrician and does not know how to fix a lost neutral, I would have to suggest that you get another electrician .

[ericmark]

As said a proper electrician should be able to fix it. Although the test gear to find cable breaks is expensive, so the more normal way is inquiry, normally if the client tells one the truth one can work out where the fault is without the expensive equipment. From fitting a shelf to hanging a picture if there is a neutral at the donor socket and not at the slave you can normally work out where the cable route is likely to be, if however the person who wired it did not follow normal methods this may not work, but if for example some one has run the cable diagonally then it needs redoing anyway.

In the main when I can't find the fault easy, the client is hiding something,

[Vaisala]

He is a fully competent/certified electrician, who we have used for a lot of our jobs. He wired our new kitchen and rewired our outside garage, so I know he is thorough. He was really puzzled by it and we have done no electrical work at all, I don't like it, it scares me. He said there must be another socket out somewhere, but we tested every socket in the house and t
THey are all good apart from this one......he thinks this particular socket is a slave from somewhere else, but it stumped him.