Today I had planned out as a day off the tools to work on my website www.mylocalelectrician.co.uk. This was not to be! Well not the morning anyway. I was called this morning by a man who had another electrician in to upgrade his consumer unit two weeks ago. The customer had got his certificate for the work and to be honest the work was ok. The guy was complaining that the right hand RCD kept tripping every time he plugged something into a socket. Apparently the electrician who done the job has gone on holiday for two weeks so this is why he called me in. I had a quick try myself with a table lamp and sure enough the RCD tripped as soon as I tried to turn on the light.
I also had a look inside the consumer unit and to be honest I could not work it out straight away as new RCD’s are very rarely faulty. I carried on looking at the consumer unit a then I saw it! The RCD feeding the right hand circuits was not only being feed from the top by an internal cable from the bottom of the main switch but it was also being feed from the bottom by the buss bar that had not been cut off which also was also connected to the main switch. Problem solved! Only thing I can’t work out was how the other electrician managed to get his readings.
