Often when their is excessive cooking and therfore alot of steam in the kitchen despite keeping the windows open, we experiance a short circuit on the ground floor kitchen sockets. The RCD trips and only after few hours of cooling the kitchen do the ground floor sockets start to work again? Is the cause condensation of the excessive steam and therefore water droplets that may enter the sockets from the litchen tiles etc or is there a deeper problem that i'm over looking? What is the best thing to do if we experiance this again short circuit again? Thx Ash
The earth fault wouldn't be a short - it is unlikely to be of negigible impedance. However you should call an Electrician urgently to look at it rather than tolerating it. It shouldn't be happening and you don't want a fire starting.
I recently had an electrician in to finish off installing a new boiler, he told me he had moved the kitchen and boiler socket on to a new ring we had spare on the fuse box as it was sharing with other ground floor sockets. Would this have remedied the issue as the electrician had done this only few day's ago? He also mentioned to change a fuse we had of 16A to a 32A, but not sure what this fuse was supporting, can I just upgrade this 16A fuse to a 32A? If so, can I pick up an MCB from Screwfix for domestic fuse boxes. Are domestic fuses single or double pole? Thx again
I'm only a DIYer but a few things occur from what you've said: 1) Has the electrician mentioned upgrading from 16A to 32A on your downstairs ring circuit because the breaker in that ring is undersized (hope he checked out all the sockets and their cabling before he did this!) for the load you are placing upon it? I believe you need to ensure that the breaker is 2/3rds the rating of the cable its protecting (again, not a sparky, just been reading up - hopefully someone here will correct me if I'm wrong!) so I wouldn't update the breaker just like that. 2) You say you were cooking. I wonder if what was actually happening is you were overloading the circuit breaker (16A), and its nothing to do with the kettle / condensation. The only reason you've drawn that link may well be because you create condensation when you are using a series of high draw appliances e.g. the kettle, cooker etc, all at once, which is tripping the breaker. If everything was all on one 16A circuit, cooker, kettle, etc, thats quite a lot of load. In my house, we have three main socket rings - Downstairs, Upstairs, Kitchen, to avoid this problem. Has it reoccurred since he moved the kitchen / boiler into a different MCB? Also you say RCD, are they definitely RCD protected or MCB?
It hasn't happened since the move to a separate mcb rated at 32A, but then again there hasn't been excessive cooking so not yet fully tested if this will remedy the issue. Not sure why the RCD would trip and on reset when the MCB of the kitchen socket is turned off, and Assalamu'Alaykum mentioned earlier, after several hours the MCB for the kitchen switch can be turned on again?
Suspicion is it was tripping due to an overload condition. That having been said personally I wojld want to satisfy myself that he had done the proper checks to ensure that the cables are adequately protected on a. 32A breaker. Moving the kitchen corcuit off probably made a big difference
I'm hoping so... There are quite a few appliances as you would expect in the kitchen, your typical toaster, microwave, washing machine, kettle, American fridge freezer and the boiler. Additionally to all of these we have a built under fridge freezer and a deep freezer!! Oh yeh a coffee maker and one if those Morthy Richards electric mops!! Can a 32A fuse support all of this power sucking appliances or should it be split? The cooker has a 40A breaker on its own MCB. Thx again
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