Crazy!!

[stephenrees55]

I have just changed an electrical socket upstairs in my home but......

To isolate the elctricity, simply switching off the 'upstairs sockets' trip did not work. With a lot of trial and error I could only switch off power supply to upstairs sockets by flicking offf both trips labelled 'upstars sockets' and 'immersion'. Is this right and, more importantly, is this dangerous????

Please help.

 

[plugwash]

its certainly not good

just how dangerous it is depends on exactly what is connected to what with what sizes and lengths of cable.........

such issues are unfortunately a pita to trace.

 

[felix]

It certainly isn't right. It sounds like the upstairs ring is linked to the immersion heater. Try turning off the immersion breaker to teat this theory. I think you'll find it stays on until you turn off the upstairs ring.

Yes it could be dangerous. Quite apart from the possibility of assuming a live circuit to be dead, the immersion wiring might be 1.5mm but it's being fed by two breakers in parallel.

 

[Damocles]

Just a guess, maybe someone had used 2.5mm cable for the immersion and for the ring, then mixed up the cables. so that the immersion and one leg of the ring went into the ring breaker and the other leg of the ring went into the immersion breaker. Would be relatively easy to do and relatively easy to put right.

Otherwise someone mixed up cables under the floor and that could be really fun to sort out.

You would need to disconnect the cables and see which is connected to which. You need to understand how it should be wired up before you can figure out how it is now.