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conundrum for the proper sparkies

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 11:11 am
by board_stupid
ok could someone please enlighten me please, i have recently become megger less due to theives so i have been limited in my work for the past week, due to this i thought id be safe in popping round a work collueges home and diagnosing a simple fault using common sence and logic, not so, their kitchen has its own ring main, after about 20 minutes of the power being on it trips, simple i thought, something surging and tripping the breaker, but the guy has plugged everything that was on that circuit into ext. leads and plugged it into another ring main, it hasnt tripped once, now im thinking breaker or rcd, but i cant test without my megger, should i commit and just change the breaker? i cant think of anything else it could be, there is no hard wired equipment on the kitchen ring, anyone got any suggestions? matt oh also, they have moved into the house very recently so wondering if its an exhisting problem as opposed to a new fault

Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:00 pm
by sparx
Hi, I find majority of faults such as this by asking questions such as have you nailed down any squeeking floor boards since moving in?
Fixed anything to walls ie utensil rack or picture hooks?

Most unlikely to be faulty MCB, but they are very cheap to replace just in case.

Sorry 'bout 'megger' but untill you can replace it can't you borrow an old one even if not to latest standard or calibrated, just to fault find/test not to certify?

I keep an old basic moving coil ins. tester for such purposes as it's much smaller, lighter, quicker to use & less prone to damaging knocks.

Only use expensive/bulky/slow MFT for certs.

good hunting,

SPARX