About fifteen years ago the overhead live cable to my house came down during a heavy snowstorm. The repair men appeared after a couple of days at 8pm but couldn't replace the cable because of obstruction from tree branches. They repurposed the earth wire as a live so I've only got incoming live and neutral wires. The next day a Condor F1-E6 earth leakage trip was fitted along with an earth cable connected to a ground spike.
All was well apart from the trip being more sensitive than I would have liked. I have RCD sockets in the garage and a plug-in Belkin RCD but if I press the test buttons on any of those it causes the ELCB to trip, maybe because it's adjacent to the power source. Not a big deal though.
For the last three weeks the ELCB has tripped several times with a variety of appliances. It has happened several times when I've just switched on the socket supplying my PC. The PSU is a good quality OCZ unit, their first to use technology acquired from their takeover of Seasonic. It draws a small current for self-test. The first time this happened, I switched off that socket and reset the ELCB, switched the socket back on and started the PC as normal. I swapped the PC's plug to another socket in case there was an arcing issue but the fault recurred after a couple of days.
It has also happened when I use my Dyson DC04 vacuum cleaner. Sometimes the trip goes off as soon as I press the vacuum's on switch, sometimes it works fine but goes off in use as did the PC on one occasion. I've fitted a new motor which seems fine but I think I'm chasing a random fault. This morning it went off just as the immersion heater timer was scheduled to cut in. I pulled the fuse but the trip refused to reset until I'd unplugged the fridge freezer, then after several attempts it relented and my fridge freezer and immersion heater are working normally. I have a 7.2KW electric shower which also now activates the trip unless used on the Eco setting.
This seemed like a good time to ditch the ELCB and fit a split load consumer unit in place of the ancient Wylex 8-way fusebox. It was surprisingly hard to find an electrician in my area to do this and the one who eventually appeared seems reluctant to fit a consumer unit because it would make things worse, although I can't imagine what could be worse. On his first visit he suspected a neutral to earth leak on the shower's 'high' setting so the shower fuse was experimentally removed. This seemed to do the trick for a day or so and I was just about to order a new shower when the juice went off again.
I removed the remaining fuses from the fusebox and replaced them systematically. With only one fuse connected at a time I noticed trips on three circuits even though nothing was switched on. After several minutes the faults disappeared and I was able to refit a minimum number of fuses to power lights, immersion heater and four radial sockets from which I ran essential appliances via extension cables. That setup worked fine for four days until this morning.
Probably clutching at straws, I've renewed an old brown bakelite socket in one of the kitchen cupboards and I'll fit a new exterior light PIR later today. I'm waiting for a new ceiling switch (50A Crabtree) for the shower supply as I found during testing that the existing one is set in the 'on' position. Maybe just a mechanical failure but I'll know more when I remove it.
Does any of that point to an area that might be worth testing further? My first thought was to ditch the ELCB and ancient fusebox, if only to eliminate them. The electrician told me I'd need some (as yet unspecified) upgraded component in the consumer unit to compensate for the removal of the ELCB, given that I don't have a normal earth wire. Should I ask my power supplier to replace the missing overhead wire?
All was well apart from the trip being more sensitive than I would have liked. I have RCD sockets in the garage and a plug-in Belkin RCD but if I press the test buttons on any of those it causes the ELCB to trip, maybe because it's adjacent to the power source. Not a big deal though.
For the last three weeks the ELCB has tripped several times with a variety of appliances. It has happened several times when I've just switched on the socket supplying my PC. The PSU is a good quality OCZ unit, their first to use technology acquired from their takeover of Seasonic. It draws a small current for self-test. The first time this happened, I switched off that socket and reset the ELCB, switched the socket back on and started the PC as normal. I swapped the PC's plug to another socket in case there was an arcing issue but the fault recurred after a couple of days.
It has also happened when I use my Dyson DC04 vacuum cleaner. Sometimes the trip goes off as soon as I press the vacuum's on switch, sometimes it works fine but goes off in use as did the PC on one occasion. I've fitted a new motor which seems fine but I think I'm chasing a random fault. This morning it went off just as the immersion heater timer was scheduled to cut in. I pulled the fuse but the trip refused to reset until I'd unplugged the fridge freezer, then after several attempts it relented and my fridge freezer and immersion heater are working normally. I have a 7.2KW electric shower which also now activates the trip unless used on the Eco setting.
This seemed like a good time to ditch the ELCB and fit a split load consumer unit in place of the ancient Wylex 8-way fusebox. It was surprisingly hard to find an electrician in my area to do this and the one who eventually appeared seems reluctant to fit a consumer unit because it would make things worse, although I can't imagine what could be worse. On his first visit he suspected a neutral to earth leak on the shower's 'high' setting so the shower fuse was experimentally removed. This seemed to do the trick for a day or so and I was just about to order a new shower when the juice went off again.
I removed the remaining fuses from the fusebox and replaced them systematically. With only one fuse connected at a time I noticed trips on three circuits even though nothing was switched on. After several minutes the faults disappeared and I was able to refit a minimum number of fuses to power lights, immersion heater and four radial sockets from which I ran essential appliances via extension cables. That setup worked fine for four days until this morning.
Probably clutching at straws, I've renewed an old brown bakelite socket in one of the kitchen cupboards and I'll fit a new exterior light PIR later today. I'm waiting for a new ceiling switch (50A Crabtree) for the shower supply as I found during testing that the existing one is set in the 'on' position. Maybe just a mechanical failure but I'll know more when I remove it.
Does any of that point to an area that might be worth testing further? My first thought was to ditch the ELCB and ancient fusebox, if only to eliminate them. The electrician told me I'd need some (as yet unspecified) upgraded component in the consumer unit to compensate for the removal of the ELCB, given that I don't have a normal earth wire. Should I ask my power supplier to replace the missing overhead wire?
