Grumble Thread

[Serial_Apologist]

My washing machine (a Bosch only three years old) died....mid-wash . Rather like toast falling butter-side down. Cue much bailing out amid wet flooring, washing wrapped up in a huge bath towel....
(ex-carers know how to cope with a mini crisis. Well at least until we don't.)....

First bookable service....December.... ....

OK - change fuse. Still dead. Plug kettle into outlet. Dead...aha!
Try machine into other outlet via long extension.... Return of The Mighty Bosch....!

So I need a electrician for the very out of the way outlet down among the slugs, not a Bosch engineer....
Lesson: never forget the basics.

What Classical Music am I listening to? Not much really. One of those weeks (again). Not sure if I'm punch-drunk or philosophical.

Which fuses belong to which parts of my circuit was something I found out about when all the lights connected with one particular one went out one night, including the one nearest the fuse box, and I had to find a candle, bottle to stick it in, and matches from when I last used them for smoking purposes, seven years before! I thus learned the hard lesson of finding out which fuses applied where, and without further ado wrote them up on a piece of paper stuck on the wall in the cupboard, next to the fuse box.

[Dave2002]

Lesson: don't lose documents!

Not always that easy to avoid.

[Dave2002]

Which fuses belong to which parts of my circuit was something I found out about when all the lights connected with one particular one went out one night, including the one nearest the fuse box, and I had to find a candle, bottle to stick it in, and matches from when I last used them for smoking purposes, seven years before! I thus learned the hard lesson of finding out which fuses applied where, and without further ado wrote them up on a piece of paper stuck on the wall in the cupboard, next to the fuse box.

Do you still have a fuse box? We have had so-called consumer units for years, and they have switches which trip. Usually the installers write a name for each circuit attached to a switch on a panel for that purpose.

[Frances_iom]

I thus learned the hard lesson of finding out which fuses applied where, and without further ado wrote them up on a piece of paper stuck on the wall in the cupboard, next to the fuse box.

Fuses per se have been obsolete for years - modern switch boards should have little labels attached eg gfloor lights etc - small LED torches are inexpensive + unless you buy cheap cells will last years unused until needed - hang on a hook near a door - also useful if you need to go out in a power cut

[Bryn]

Fuses per se have been obsolete for years - modern switch boards should have little labels attached eg gfloor lights etc - small LED torches are inexpensive + unless you buy cheap cells will last years unused until needed - hang on a hook near a door - also useful if you need to go out in a power cut

Fusebox (mainly cartridge but a couple with old-style clamped wire fuses still in use here. However, I do need to get the place rewired.

[Frances_iom]

that suggests the wiring is over 40 years old - my UK place was rewired from a similar arrangement over 35years ago and at the time the RCBs had been the norm for new rewires for some years.

[jayne lee wilson]

My house was rewired in the 1980s, so I have something like this.....

https://www.doityourself.com/forum/electrical-ac-dc/620006-how-change-fuse-old-fuse-box.html

Some models have cartridges within, but if a fuse blows here, I have all the fun of manual rewiring...... you still see quite a few of these in older buildings, usually made by Wylex.

[Pulcinella]

Fuses per se have been obsolete for years - modern switch boards should have little labels attached eg gfloor lights etc - small LED torches are inexpensive + unless you buy cheap cells will last years unused until needed - hang on a hook near a door - also useful if you need to go out in a power cut

Perhaps even better, a wind-up torch.
Something like this (though ours were cheaper and cheerfuller!):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/VADIV-Emergency-Flashlight-Rechargeable-Traveling/dp/B083GF48Q4/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?adgrpid=57786373831&dchild=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7baNqI3s7AIVRe7tCh2HCwZ5EAAYASAAEgLD8fD_BwE&hvadid=267995560014&hvdev=t&hvlocphy=1007266&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=9697759017766048287&hvtargid=kwd-295406868176&hydadcr=28148_1752695&keywords=wind-up+torch&qid=1604603370&sr=8-1-spons&tag=googhydr-21&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEzRFE3UERIUzFJVEwzJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwOTU3NTQwMjZBNzA4OEk2Nko5WSZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwNjM0Mzc1M09TQ1hGRDI4TU05WSZ3aWRnZXROYW1lPXNwX2F0ZiZhY3Rpb249Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

We had a power cut earlier this week, and a couple of these (in bedside cabinets, so relatively easy to find) came in useful.
Big LED torch lives on downstairs cloakroom window ledge!

[Dave2002]

We have two consumer units (so far) but we have had some annoying failures (quite expensive - tripped out a couple of freezers when we were away). We have had the wiring checked, but sadly no confirmation of what has been causing the problems. We have consequently asked for modifications so that several of the circuits which are currently all wired to a single RCD will each have their own RCD.

This web site gives some details of more modern circuit switch units for domestic buildings - https://www.consumerunitworld.co.uk/...in%20Switch%27.

I wonder whether we actually not only need RCDs but maybe RCBOs - I'll have to check further. The electricians we have used seem competent and up to date on current (ha!) wiring practices and regulations.

[Petrushka]

We have two consumer units (so far) but we have had some annoying failures (quite expensive - tripped out a couple of freezers when we were away). We have had the wiring checked, but sadly no confirmation of what has been causing the problems. We have consequently asked for modifications so that several of the circuits which are currently all wired to a single RCD will each have their own RCD.

This web site gives some details of more modern circuit switch units for domestic buildings - https://www.consumerunitworld.co.uk/...in%20Switch%27.

I wonder whether we actually not only need RCDs but maybe RCBOs - I'll have to check further. The electricians we have used seem competent and up to date on current (ha!) wiring practices and regulations.

Hadn't realised that they called them 'consumer units' nowadays but the item pictured in your link is exactly what I have.

One issue can be that they are sometimes over-sensitive to 'tripping'. My brother, who is an electrical engineer, said it's a safety feature and if it trips it usually indicates that either an appliance linked to that particular circuit could be unsafe or that it is overloaded (too many appliances on the same circuit). This caused big problems when my elderly parents were alive, I was at work and the so-called safety feature was downright dangerous, tripping the switch and plunging the house in darkness. We found that a dodgy kettle was the culprit.

[Frances_iom]

.

I wonder whether we actually not only need RCDs but maybe RCBOs - I'll have to check further. The electricians we have used seem competent and up to date on current (ha!) wiring practices and regulations.

When I rewired my place many years ago I placed the Fridge + freezer on their own 16A spur not protected by a RCB to avoid nasty surprises on return from a holiday.
However once RCBOs became more available at a sensible price these could be fitted to each circuit including the separate fridge + freezer spur - they being the same size as the previous CBs meant that the consumer unit gained room for 4 extra RCBO's as the 2 old high current dual width RCBs protecting several circuits were no longer needed and I could place the small cellar workshop on its own circuit + rationalise the lighting circuits.

[Cockney Sparrow]

We have two consumer units (so far) but we have had some annoying failures (quite expensive - tripped out a couple of freezers when we were away). We have had the wiring checked, but sadly no confirmation of what has been causing the problems. We have consequently asked for modifications so that several of the circuits which are currently all wired to a single RCD will each have their own RCD.

This web site gives some details of more modern circuit switch units for domestic buildings - https://www.consumerunitworld.co.uk/...in%20Switch%27.

I wonder whether we actually not only need RCDs but maybe RCBOs - I'll have to check further. The electricians we have used seem competent and up to date on current (ha!) wiring practices and regulations.

We had a run of RCD tripping - it was the "Master" RCD - not one of the various ring main/other circuit RCD themselves so it wasn't possible to see which circuit was involved. In the end we moved the solar panel RCD onto an alternative section of the board not covered by the said RCD and there were no more problems.....

[Dave2002]

We found that a dodgy kettle was the culprit.

It can be hard to find culprits for trips. General "conventional wisdom" seems to be that older devices, and in particular old fridges and freezers may be the source of problems. Indeed, one of my friends had similar issues, and after a few incidents decided that an old fridge or freezer was the reason, and disposed of it quickly.

When our systems started tripping that was our first thought too, but despite having one old freezer (obtained from freecycle) we did not discard it, but started to consider how the circuits trip. In one period the trips always seemed to occur at fixed times. Since then the trips have occurred at random times - mostly overnight. My suspicion is that trailing leads - extension leads on the floor can be a source of problems, so now I unplug most of those each night.

Until we get the electricians back to install the separate circuit protection devices it's going to be very hard to identify a particular faulty appliance. Clearly if we had identified a faulty device we'd have either had it repaired, or would discard it. If we had identified faulty wiring we'd have had that changed too.

The protection devices do various things. One is detect overload, and another is to detect earth leakage current.
A page which explains some of these is here - https://www.tutorialspoint.com/elect...nsing%20device.

From the point of view of basic human safety it makes sense to have devices which trip on all potentially hazardous faults - which include circuit overload and earth leakage issues, but while that may render systems safer, surely it might also make detection of a particular problem harder? As noted, tripping the whole of a domestic system might also create additional hazards - for example turning all the lights off, so although occupants are protected against electrical problems they may have other difficulties - falling down stairs for example.

We are still hoping that having individual circuit protection for our circuits might provide good protection, bring our house system up to the latest regulatory standards, and also help us to identify any faulty devices or wiring if there are continuing problems into the future.

Sometimes deciding that an appliance is faulty may be based on incomplete or inaccurate information. Another friend disposed of what was probably a perfectly good dishwasher because it wasn't working - only 2 years old. It was only when it was taken away and replaced by a new one that he discovered that the outlet pipe was twisted/blocked, due to someone else in his household who had been moving the appliance in and out without his knowledge. It wasn't an electrical fault, but his thought processes were compromised by assumptions and lack of information.

[Stanfordian]

Annoying, I agree. My solution was to instal a wireless system which I have set up to play a snippet from the end of Beeethoven's 5th Symphony (from a wide range of clips available). The one drawback is that it's not as loud as I'd like.

I like your ingenuity Bryn!

[jayne lee wilson]

Wondered from your description whether a switch had been tripped on the circuit board as this is always my first thought when electrical items inexplicably turn off. Always worth checking that other items on the same circuit within your house are all on (or off) so that this can be quickly eliminated as the culprit.

Sorry I missed this. To clarify, I changed the fuse in the plug first to no avail. Then I checked the outlet - i.e. the socket the machine was plugged into. That didn't work with the kettle either. Then I tried another socket: everything worked. Nothing else in the kitchen was affected, it is simply the socket itself that needs replacing. The fusebox is OK.

So just remember to check the whole chain - plug, socket and only then the fuse board/consumer unit etc.... unless your whole house is in darkness of course...