Tell us about your faults!

K

kung

Hi ALL
Just thought id put this one up for all those faults we find.
heres one to kick it off !
Domestic RCD tripped and wouldnt reset cause was a blown low energy light bulb.:D
There you go now for yours !
 
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Saw this in a youtube documentary I was watching today, it also happens at a local school I used to work at.

EDIT: It's the plug on the wall!
 
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Got sent on this job the other day, 'Contactor burnt out' Oh dear.

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IR and checked the windings of the motor all fine.

We replaced all the melted cabling, doing new whole runs of the the phases, also when we could on others and then cutting out the melted cable and crimping some of the longer control runs, replaced a few timers/relays, the contactor of course w/ overload. End to ended everything. IR on 100V. Done, we thought...

So then we powered the panel up in test and and the external suppy DP MCB for the the 110V Tx was tripping, I thought **** ive done something wrong, we then looked at the Tx, all the laminations were melted the varnish has all bubbled. So that was the fault.

Replaced the Tx and all worked :-)
 
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Worked in a factory awhile back their switchboard had blown up, Turns out days earlier they had had an older switchboard upgraded and the electricians doing the work didn't bother cleaning out the copper and steel filings in the bottom of the board, after turning the thing on the filings moved around causing the filings to act as a conductor between two of the phases and blew the thing up! No one was hurt thankfully but we got the insurance job to mop up
 
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Re: Tell us about your faults !

This is a very common fault which often occurs in our houses- plug falls out of the receptacle. This fault due to the losing grip and worn contacts in receptacle. The solution for it is to replace the old receptacle with a new one.
 
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posted in the arms then rembered this thread.....

So sent to property, small bedsit, to carry out EICR after new tenant moved in. first thing she poins out is that the twin socket in the lounge must be kept on for the kitchen to work!!!
Ok I entertain the idea, nothings pluged in the normal twin socket, and as im starting to explain that the switch will only break whats ever pluged in she switches it off! and I watch the boiler and fridge die!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She switches the socket back on and the power to fridge and boiler comes back up.....


Im looking at it and I lean down and do the same. I have to admit I was gob smacked, a normal switched twin socket with nothing pluged in that kills the kitchen as soon as you switch it off.........


Ok it didnt take long to find the fault but if someone phoned up with such a fault you would bet your life they were lieing.


Turned out that there was no Ring continuity, and switching the socket on and off moved the brass conection at the back of the socket just enought to make and break the live conections.
Just shows the kind of random stuff that can cause a fault.

ohh the ring cont problem was a proper loose/ hanging out conection at the other side of the kitchen.....​
 
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went to install some emergency lights in a small meeting hall today. There was a convenient pull chord near by double pole, so happily connected. All was going well until i came to screw it up and finish when the thing went bang. Thought the usual that somehow it s/c to earth or something, so tried again. Same thing. Since by this time I was running out of length on cable to do anymore connections I spent the day checking the circuit and connections and everything I could think of. The client came at the end of the day and saw me investigating and said the last electrician had to put cardboard between the connections and the earth terminal as they touch as you screw it up. SWAP THE THING IF FAULTY. Annoying to say the least. normally the first thing I check but since it worked perfectly when i attended i didn't think anything of it
 
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photo.JPG photo (1).JPG

now i'm not one for nit-picking but.......
cable management could be improved slightly me-thinks, orange cable is 3.3kv, blue pipes are water
Zs at the dist board is 3.94 ohms
and last but not least, if you haven't got an mcb just stick a main switch in!

p.s. anyone know the max zs for the main switch to meet disconnection times?!
 
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I got a call to one of my customers mothers house who had just had a new kitchen fitted, and now her shower didnt work.

All MCB's in the on position.............the breaker for the shower had actually been installed upside down, so when it was what she thought was the on position, it was actually off !! I dont know why the fitters were in her consumer unit, or why they turned her breaker upside down !!
 
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I got asked to look at a guys new cooker which would not turn on.
Opened the top up and tested it to find the neutral had dissapeared for some reason.
Went back to the cooker switch took the cover off and the insides of the switch kind of sprung out!
So after working out how this prehistoric dinosaur of a switch went together and finding out this had happened to the guy who installed it I worked out part of the neutral link was missing!
Client replies "Oh yeah I found that and wondered what it was" he then proceeds to pull it out of his tat draw!

Put it back in and fault rectified. :D
 
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Matth said:
I got a call to one of my customers mothers house who had just had a new kitchen fitted, and now her shower didnt work.

All MCB's in the on position.............the breaker for the shower had actually been installed upside down, so when it was what she thought was the on position, it was actually off !! I dont know why the fitters were in her consumer unit, or why they turned her breaker upside down !!
Click to expand...

just a call out charge for that then?!
 
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Ok so I went to an emergency call as the tenant had stated she was getting a shock from the shower. My employer doesn't really give much time for this kind of work, and doesn't pay OT, so arrived at 3.30. Carried out the normal tests on the shower circuit and found nothing wrong. Apparently this lady had had 3 shocks, the last one she said to herself I'd better be quick and carried on, lol
so I isolated the shower, and returned the next day.
all IR readings were good, well over 100M, except for upstairs lighting, which was incorrectly labelled as smoke detectors, the IR reading was .86m at 230v. Lighting was not Rcd protected, but shower, sockets and cooker were.
all circuits in the bathroom were bonded as per 16th
carried out a full EICR, and found the only one fault, the bathroom 16w 2d fitting was connected wrong, across L-E, I'm guessing that the shock was caused by the light fitting, passing current down the earth to the pipe work then on through the water and once the drains were wet, the lady got a small shock.
I reconnected the light, obviously, and did additional supp bonding in bathroom and to shower circuit,. The tenant hasn't had another shock since.
 
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Yea, used the cpc as a switched line just on the switch drop! Used red sleeving at both ends, cpc wasn't exposed like it shows in the pic I ripped it open a bit, as at first it looked like 4 core cable!
 
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I got called to a house to rectify a cooker circuit that had tripped and stopped working. Traced the fault all the way back to inside to cooker only to find an electrocuted mouse between live and earth.........nice!
 
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Everything is wired back to front at every point lighting and power, so nothing has been tripping, also if you look closely at the lighting they're on a 32amp breaker lol
 
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Tell us about your faults!
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