Earth leakage clamp meter

[Wilson12]

Hi
It’s a bad setup but I went for a call out in the night in a residential unit.
There’s a rcd in its own enclosure feeding a 14 way board that had tripped.
I reset it didn’t trip.
I passed 2 mornings later and still hadn’t tripped.
Whilst there on first visit I stuck my earth leakage clamp around the outgoing rcd tails and
Around 9amps
Fluctuating next minute was 6amps

also similar amps around main earth.
The biggest culprit and most likely was outside lights which dropped it from 9amps to 2.5
Another lighting circuit dropped it to 1 amp when both off.

how was there 9amps imbalance on tails and 30ma rcd not tripping ?
I forgot to do a ramp test.

 

[Wilko]

Hi - not sure I understand correctly, but if there was 9A in the means of earthing conductor, that would indicate a direct N-E fault AND the RCD would likely be faulty too ...

 

[Welchyboy1]

Hi
It’s a bad setup but I went for a call out in the night in a residential unit.
There’s a rcd in its own enclosure feeding a 14 way board that had tripped.
I reset it didn’t trip.
I passed 2 mornings later and still hadn’t tripped.
Whilst there on first visit I stuck my earth leakage clamp around the outgoing rcd tails and
Around 9amps
Fluctuating next minute was 6amps

also similar amps around main earth.
The biggest culprit and most likely was outside lights which dropped it from 9amps to 2.5
Another lighting circuit dropped it to 1 amp when both off.

how was there 9amps imbalance on tails and 30ma rcd not tripping ?
I forgot to do a ramp test.

Do you mean milliamps

 

[James]

are you sure of the following?

meter was positioned correctly round all the relevant cores
you are reading the correct scale on the meter

9mA would be acceptable
9A is huge, it suggests that there is over 2kw of energy being dissipated by a live to earth fault.

if that is the case then you have both a faulty rcd and a fault that i am surprised has not already started a FIRE