At what point can I tell my landlord to call an electrician?!

[aiwfcie]

It does work the other way round, too.

I used to look after fifteen flats and on one occasion I had a report that the immersion wasn't working so went round right away in the evening to - switch it on.

Nevertheless, it should be looked at. The landlord would soon complain if you got fed up waiting, tried to repair it yourself and caused more trouble.

Similar thing - 188 mile round trip - happened to me recently. When I explained to the gentleman what the 'issue' had been, it seemed he'd rather not take his eyes off the television screen.


However in the OP's case, I strongly suspect it's likely to be the landlord's responsibility.
When you moved in, were you given access to any (recent) electrical certificate? On the consumer unit, is there a sticker which has the date that the last electrical test was carried out?

Oh gosh, yeah I'm sure it can be a nightmare. Didn't mean to landlord-bash in that post - I've just sadly had quite rubbish experiences so far. 188 miles is a bloody long way... wow.

Glad that you guys think this sounds electrician-worthy though. I've sent him an email now to ask so hopefully that should get the wheels in motion in figuring out what's going on. It's not really a massive problem pragmatically - it just means popping downstairs and flipping the switch, but I worry that it's symptomatic of something potentially dangerous.

Nope, no electrical certificates or anything like that. And from memory I think there is a sticker on the box... but I have a feeling it doesn't have a date written onto it at all!

 

[ericmark]

I have had RCD protection in my house for 25 years or so, and every so often we will get a batch of tripping, maybe 10 times in a month then will do 2 years without tripping once, we have never found what would be considered faulty wiring or appliances.

So it the electrician can find an appliance which is faulty which belongs to you then your fault. But likely he will either find a fault in landlords stuff or no fault, and no fault means he can't find it, not that there is nothing wrong, even an electric storm can cause my trip to go, and it is an under ground feed.

 

[OwainDIYer]

... it's often over night. ... there was a leak a few months ago and I know we have a cellar...

If it's the RCD tripping it sounds as though it could be temperature-related dampness (it's cooler at night and condensation can form). There may be enough current flowing during repeated trips to dry out the fault path and allow the RCD to hold on after several attempts.

This needs an electrician.

 

[JohnW2]

I have had RCD protection in my house for 25 years or so, and every so often we will get a batch of tripping, maybe 10 times in a month then will do 2 years without tripping once, we have never found what would be considered faulty wiring or appliances.

You've often reported that, but I wonder how common it is. I've lived with about a dozen RCDs for 20+ years, and I have experienced few, if any, unexplained trips during that period (although a good few 'explained' ones).

Am I just lucky?

Kind Regards, John

 

[Doggit]

You say that you've unplugged everything, but you've then left the cooker plugged in, so you need to isolate everything first. And although the fridge/freezers on a separate circuit, as it's one of the few things going at night, so it could be causing a feedback to a dodgy kitchen breaker.

Having a difficult landlord means that you are going to need to do some more investigating before you can push him to look at it, but if he's been using a "handyman" to do repairs, you need to make sure that it's a proper electrician that comes. If the landlord still won't deal with things, then you contact environmental health department, and they'll serve him a notice to deal with the problem. You now protection from landlords that take revenge on tenants that complain, so don't worry about taking this route, although it might be worth telling him that you'll have to contact them if he's not prepared to investigate the problem. Just make sure that the electrician isn't going to try and blame you whatever he finds.

 

[seasickstevie]

If you can manage to leave your fridge unplugged over a few nights (not suggesting you risk destroying your food, but maybe you could manage in some way. We're not expecting a heatwave anytime soon), it'd be interesting to see if it trips. Then at least if it did trip when it was unplugged, you could eliminate the fridge as a suspect (the defrost element sometimes causes a leak to earth).

You say that you can't isolate/switch off/unplug the oven. Unfortunately there's no way you can do the same with that. Even with the knobs all turned to 'off', an electrical leak on an element (not uncommon) will still cause the RCD to trip. But that's the landlord's property anyway.

 

[securespark]

You've often reported that, but I wonder how common it is. I've lived with about a dozen RCDs for 20+ years, and I have experienced few, if any, unexplained trips during that period (although a good few 'explained' ones).

Am I just lucky?

I have lived in this house since Summer 1999. We inherited the electrical installation on an RCD incomer which I never got round to rewiring.We have now had three RCD trips in total, all explained. One was due to a faulty tumble drier. One was down to a garden hose that was left turned on at the tap when we went away and it blew off, flooding the patio and causing water to drain through an airbrick, flooding the under-floor space.
The other was the most recent and was simply one of the boys spilling a glass of water onto a multi-way extension lead.

 

[JohnW2]

I have lived in this house since Summer 1999. We inherited the electrical installation on an RCD incomer which I never got round to rewiring.We have now had three RCD trips in total, all explained.

Thanks - that's consistent with my ('larger scale') experiences, then.

Maybe it's a case of eric being unlucky, rather than my being lucky??

Kind Regards, John