Consumer Unit Transformer

[JohnW2]

You have said this before, and I have also said in my old house how I lost two freezers full of food when we had left the house for a few months to look after my mother,

Yews, we've often discussed that difference in our experiences. Mind you, I would think that to leave freezers running, with food in them, during a period of "a few months" of non-occupancy has got to be a significant gamble - over the years/decades, we have lost several freezers, but all have died suddenly/unexpectedly, without any warning.

[In passing, a few years back a neighbour of mine lost the contents of the freezer in his garage. What we do suffer from 'out in the sticks' is frequent very brief 'power cuts' (oven only a few seconds in duration). In a well-intentioned gesture, he was running his freezer from n 'RCD socket' and, being an 'active RCD' left the freezer without power when the supply was restored a few seconds later! ]

I don't count these as 'nuisance trips' (since nothing within the installation could have avoided them but, until about 20 years ago, we quite often suffered from RCD trips when there was lightning anywhere near. Co-incidence or not, that all stopped when the supply to nearly all of our village (but not my house! ) was moved from overhead to underground supplies.

I really don't know how copy these spontaneous 'nuisance' RCD trips really are. As a consequence of what you and others report (in contrast to my own experiences), over the years I have asked many 'family and friends' and have yet to find anyone who has experienced any significant problem. Indeed, a good few of them did not realise that RCDs can trip 'for no good reason' and/or would not know what to do if it happened.

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

I think we must remember my RCD's were obtained around 1992, they were 4 module wide, not the normal 2 module width, and before we went electronic with many RCD's. I blamed some one local welding, and spikes on the supply causing the trips, we would reduce freezer content before holidays, but we had never intended to stop with mother so long, and we had not planned it happening.

This house the sockets used for freezers are battery backed, as yet not tested the back up, I would think it would depend on time of day, in theroy it should only discharge batteries to 10% leaving that for back up power, in practice it often discharges further, so a power cut over night possibly no battery, during the day solar would also supply the battery so a power cut at 10 am and we could go for weeks, as once no grid most of house stops working, only freezers and central heating works, but at 10 pm likely very different story.

My freezers are now on 3 RCD's down stairs not battery backed on a RCBO and upstairs on two RCD sockets, so a RCD trip would be limited, however the main problem is to know an RCD/RCBO has tripped, it may be 5 days between trips down stairs into flat, so likely I would not know it had tripped.

With old house the landing light switching on, would alert us of a power failure in the day, since stairs were in centre of house, I had an emergency lamp on the landing. I light switching on one sees, but the two neon/LED red lights on the RCD sockets would be so easy to miss. So there is a case for just two RCD's as one is well aware when they fail.

But since moving here only had one RCBO trip, and that was when the roof leaked and filled a socket with water, so good reason why it tripped. But whole house on 14 RCBO's + 2 RCD sockets, so we can always find a way around a fault. If we are aware of it.