Mystery tripping during the night

[JoeMagin]

Hi all,
Was hoping to get some light shed on the particular cause to an issue we had last night.

Was woke at 2 in the morning by my partner saying none of the sockets were working. I went to the CU and the sockets MCB had tripped as well as the RCD.

Flicked them both back on, but the sockets ring remained unpowered, all of them, even with the MCB still on. Couldnt be bothered to try and fix at 2am, so switched it off and went to bed.

Next morning, still not working. So i removed the cover to see if there was a loose connection. Upon tightening up the connections, the sockets ring was fine, but the kitchen sockets were loose on the outgoing and the incoming for the shower was not even close to being tightened up.

I cant see how these would affect the sockets tripping on another MCB though so am inclined to write it off as a coincidence.

Having turned the sockets mcb off and on a few times, theyre working again, so am lead to believe we are looking at a faulty MCB?

As for the MCB and RCD tripping at the same time, is that an indicator of a short to earth?

Cheers in advance for any advice

Joe

 

[telectrix]

the MCB tripping could in itself cause the RCD to trip. now yous checked all the connections and everything works, just keep an eye on it.

 

[JoeMagin]

Ooh i wasnt aware of that! Ill be sure to, not a big fan of being woke in the early hours

 

[pc1966]

Sometimes a bad connection can cause a surge as it reconnects on to a load which might just trip things. But hopefully you have checked ALL of the terminals for tightness now and it might be down to that.

But it is very worrying if whoever installed it had not properly tightened things up!

 

[JoeMagin]

Sometimes a bad connection can cause a surge as it reconnects on to a load which might just trip things. But hopefully you have checked ALL of the terminals for tightness now and it might be down to that.

But it is very worrying if whoever installed it had not properly tightened things up!

Only thing is the poor connections were on other circuits, so i wasn't sure how they could affect the sockets. But you're right, very worryihg. I'm in a rental property so i wouldnt be surprised if any EICRs were of the drive-by variety