Old consumer unit, breaker tripping

[Harry Bloomfield]

If it is the wiring, which I kind of expect for some reason, that's going to be difficult to test as it's an old house, and a fair number of the sockets downstairs are on spurs. Not sure if the wiring for the upstairs sockets runs in the loft and down or under the floor and up; either way access isn't great, not to mention that I only just finished plastering and painting downstairs.

With a solid (concrete groundfloor, it is usual to run socket cables, down from the ceiling. With a timber floor, they could be run under the floor, or in the ceiling. First floor plugs, are almost always wired via the floor/ ground floor ceiling.

 

[Moorea21]

The tripping started about a year ago, very intermittent, but became increasingly frequent from about 3 months ago. Started the plastering 2 weeks ago. The downstairs has some damp in the bottom of the walls, but I never use the sockets at floor level anyway, as they're all hidden behind things, so I terminated the ends with choc block and capped them over a while back.

Thanks Harry, I assumed the sockets would go under the floor upstairs. Bare (painted) floor boards up there, so fairly easy to get at, but a sod to repair afterwards I think.

 

[Murdochcat]

You need a competent spark with proper test kit to do some basic tests. In the meantime best you keep a log of when it trips. You never know it might show some sort of pattern