RCD Keeps tripping

[johno2009]

Hello This is my fisrt post so hello

I have been having a problem for a while with the RCD tripping very intermitantly but recently it can be twice a day or once every 3 days.Also once it has tripped it will not reset until i turn off all the individual MCD's and the reset and turn back on the mcd's

Anyway my 1st port of call was to isolate all apliances so i have unplugged every apliance one by one to see if it stops tripping out just to try and eliminate each one.after all major appliances isolated like this it still trips.

After doing all this still have problem so next point of call was to test all plug sockets with a socket tester.

Tested all sockets in house and one came up with live neutral reverse and this was the one where the fridge freezer is plugged in in utility room.

Turned off the power and opened up the socket and the black wires were in the live terminal and brown in neutral. So i changed them around and turned power back on and replugged the socket tester and all was well until i plugged in fridge and the rcd tripped and would not reset until i unpluged it.
Now got a bit confused at this as the socket tester was saying plug is now wired right, so my next step was to change the wires in the freezer plug around so the blue in live and brown in neutral and low and behold pluggeg it in and freezer comes to life and no rcd trip.

I have now unplugged it until i can get hopefully a answer here as to how this is now working with wires in freezer reversed. also what hazzards can i expect.

Now im not sure if this has been the root cause of the rcd tripping unless it starts to trip again but would like to know implications of running the freezer with the wires reversed.

thanks

 

[bernardgreen]

is now working with wires in freezer reversed. also what hazzards can i expect.

The hazard of a freezer that is Live even when switched off as the switches are now controlling the Neutral leaving the Live connected at all times. Rewire the plug the correct way.

Then consider that the freezer may have an earth leakage fault.

 

[ericmark]

Neutral is at near earth potential so any fault neutral to earth has to be a lot larger than a line to earth fault to cause the 15 to 30 milliamp to flow to cause the RCD to trip.

From your description you have a line - earth fault which clearly needs correcting with the freezer. Swapping line and neutral I know is done with rest of Europe but not in the UK. The problem is most appliances control only the line to in your case switch on the motor or de-frost element so swapping means the freezer has power to it even when nothing is running and we consider this as dangerous.

This is why in this country our regulations state plugs need to be non reversible.