RCD Tripped out for no apparant reason Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[jaydee456]

Had a wierd thing happen last night

fortunately I noticed the radio alarm was off last night after I had switched everything off before going to bed or would have had a soggy freezer this morning.
The RCD in the consumer unit had tripped out. no circuit breakers had gone out at all on the three power circuits it covers,and when I switched it back on all was fine. Can they trip maybe because of a power surge or something.
Everything is ok still this morning.

Thanks J

[kbrownie]

Hi jaydee456,
If it keeps tripping out, get a electrician in to check the installation.
RCDs trip when there is an in-ballance of current between the phase and neutral conductor. This is normally caused by a fault to earth, so better safe...
Regards
KB

[jaydee456]

Thanks for the repky KB

Will get it checked out if it happens again.
House was only rewired 2 years ago so hopefully it was just a blip. :wink:

[ericmark]

Thunder storms and some switched mode power supplies can trip it out without there being any fault. I would say mine trips out about 4 times a year. The regulations do allow freezers to be supplied from non earth leakage protected sockets but then it is even more of a problem realizing when it has tripped. So electricians use the same supply as used for the alarm circuit as when that trips the batteries in the alarm alert the occupier that a fault has happened. Some items do have high earth leakage mainly those with heating elements and where the cooker is powered from the earth leakage protected side of the consumer unit this can cause it to trip. If there is no socket on the main cooker switch it would not normally go through the earth leakage but if there is a socket built into the main switch many electricians than connect it to the protected side of the consumer unit.