Upstairs sockets switch keeps tripping. All plugs unplugged. Any thoughts?

[BBmybaby]

We are having an issue with our upstairs sockets switch which keeps tripping. On the occasion that it doesn’t trip, the fridge and oven downstairs switch trips. Lights upstairs are working fine. It’s just the sockets. Sharing board for more info. Thanks!

Is the fusebox under the bathroom? Check if there's a leak

Have an electrician come and do an EICR. It is possible you may have some outdated wiring in your home.

We had this. One of the sockets needed replacing.

The boiler

Thanks. Did it take a whole day for the electrician to locate this? Our electrician said he will need a whole day to locate source but seems like a lot too me.

Try identifying it yourself first. Turn off all the upstairs sockets and then plug something into a socket at a time. Best if it's a heavy electrical use item like a vacuum cleaner. Then plug it into every socket, one at a time to see if it's that.

But, if the downstairs also trips occasionally, then you might have faulty wiring or even a faulty fuse box.

We had this once - for days - left everyone stumped

turns out a crappy electrician had taped a join years before which became loose and burnt a hole in the copper pipe for hot water. There was water causing it to trip

took an excellent electrician to go under the floor to sort

I’m not able to do this because the breaker switch remains tripped even with everything unplugged

Before you pay for the electrician check if you can locate the problem socket yourself.

Make sure that the breaker is off and then look into each socket. Are there any which have something on one of the holes, any blackness round them, and damp in or round them.

If so get the electrician to start with that one…

I had this and the electrician narrowed it down to two wires behind the socket were touching and burnt.
Switch everything off at the main, take off the face plate & look into the socket. See if you can see any damage/burning issues. There might be black streaks/burn marks up the back of the face plate too?
It took our electrician 30 mins to locate & fix.

Plugging in the sockets one by one won’t necessarily tell you much because they’re wired in parallel, not series, which means that if there is a fault with one of the sockets it will trip the whole ring. There is some basic fault finding you can carry out:

First: establish which MCB is tripping out

the fact that it’s not always the upstairs socket but also sometimes the downstairs kitchen ring or oven is an issue. This might be multiple faults- your fridge or your oven might have their own discrete fault, or it might be that the fault is located on your consumer board.

examine the wiring (as much as you can safely see)- can you see any loose or stray cables? As you’ve not said the RCD is tripping this seems unlikely.

if not, the next thing is to attempt to replace sockets. You can buy bog standard sockets for around £1/each from screwfix. Wiring your own sockets is very simple and straight forward. The live connectors go into live; the neutral to neutral and earth to earth. It really is that simple.

plug in a light or something and trip out the breaker to ensure you have the right ring tripped out- or if you have a current indicator device use that to establish if there’s any current in the live (old colour was red, brown these days, neutral was black, is now blue, earth is green) cable. Once the ring is tripped out, and you’re confident there’s no current, you can replace all the sockets on that ring with cheap but functioning new sockets. If the fault ceases, then you have a socket fault, which is good news, it’s a simple process to replace your sockets. If you want to go through the laborious process of installing your old sockets one by one to find the faulty socket, then go nuts, but personally I’d replace the lot. Rewiring a socket is a tedious business. Also, pro tip: don’t use a drill/impact driver to screw in/unscrew the faceplate. If you shear the screw in the backbox, it’s a WHOLE lot more work. Always hand screw. Use screwdrivers rated for 1000v work (even cheap electricians screwdriver sets will be rated to 1kv).

If the issue persists, then rather than a faulty socket you now have faulty wiring. This is a bigger issue and realistically cannot be fixed without an electrician. If this is the case then it is likely there’s some sort of corrosion on the insulation and you now have an earth of some sort somewhere. This would surprise me, as it is unlikely, and would be more likely to trip the RCD as well.

If you still have multiple breakers tripping and have ruled out the sockets being at fault, and having unplugged the fridge/oven you still have the kitchen ring blowing (switch your blender on or something to test the ring) then it’s starting to look like a consumer unit fault. Again, this requires an electrician. Replacement of a consumer unit is notifiable work, and needs sign off from a suitably certified tradesperson.

Overall, in your shoes I would be inclined to replace all the sockets in the first instance (a few hours of your time + the cost of around £12 for a bunch of brand new spare sockets). If this doesn’t fix the issue then either way you need an electrician, so just get one out. I don’t mind doing my own wiring/changing sockets because electricity makes sense to me, + I have appropriate tools + PPE, but generally playing with plumbing or wiring is a high risk game if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Sorry yes as other PP have mentioned, when taking sockets out of their backboxes, any evidence of scorching, corroded/damaged insulation, damp or anything else should be a real 🚩.

The good news is that it’s highly unlikely to be wiring- the picture of your consumer unit looks relatively new with a 100a RCD means it looks (on the face of it) to be a modern steel boxed consumer unit so part p compliant and suggests that your wiring is relatively modern and unlikely to need replacing (good rule of thumb is that wiring should be good for 50 years).

I wouldn’t go by the consumer unit. We had a brand new one in a house when we moved in. We did an EICR and it failed on multiple points- a few were critical safety points. The prior owner had a “mate” who’d put in a new consumer unit but didn’t really know what they were doing. The EICR had a phrase that has lodged in my mind “unrecognisable wiring methods were used..”

Has it been happening for a while or is it following the heavy rain the country's had the last few weeks? If its only upstairs after checking the sockets for scorching I might go into the roof and look for leaks incase waters got in the system somewhere.

No, it was pretty quick. We unplugged everything. I was stood in the kitchen while he tried the trip switch again and I heard the socket pop.

The problem with something like this is an electrician can't tell in advance how long it will take. He can start with obvious and likely causes. If its that he could be half an hour. If he needs to go round the sockets one by one it could be all day. But even if he finds it first go it's a day when he can't book any other work in in case it does take all day.

I would get a Condition Report done by a reputable electrician asap. I had a similar issue and there were multiple faults caused by kitchen and bathroom installations in the previous few years, which had included a new fuse box. The electrician said one fault was so dangerous that he repaired it then and there rather than go back to the office to get a quote sent out. I wouldn't recommend doing anything yourself, for safety reasons and because I think it's against the rules if you are not a qualified electrician. Worth adding that while the above sounds serious, the costs to fix it all were not huge.

When they come to do the Condition Report they will find the faults, fix them and then issue the report, so you then have a clean CR, which could be handy if and when you come to move.

"On the occasion that it doesn’t trip, the fridge and oven downstairs switch trips."

This makes no sense. Does it mean that when the upstairs sockets aren't tripped the downstairs fridge and oven always is ? It's unclear.

That is a split ring RCD arrangement from what I can tell. I doubt whether there is earth leakage of any significant amount or else the RCD would trip rather than the breaker for the upstairs sockets.

If the upstairs socket only circuit trips, it probably means there is some sort of overload or fault in that circuit. If you have a lot of heavy power devices plugged into the upstairs sockets then it could be tripping because of that. Sockets are normally 13A, but the breakers are normally only about 30A. So if you have say 6 sockets on that breaker then if you are plugging stuff like electric heaters and kettles in then it is easy to exceed the breaker limit.

I think a days work for that is overkill. Unless they are coming from 200 miles away. People are right, if it is a wiring fault (internal to the walls) then it could take a longer time to resolve to find the fault and dig out the wire to repair. But if it is just a socket replacement then it could be less than 1 hour to find and replace.

Just tagging to say that the EICR mentioned in my post is the same thing as the condition report mentioned in this post.

OP, on the consumer unit, right of centre, What does the word written in black ink with 3 lines fanning out above it say?

I also note the upstairs socket breaker ( ‘fuse’ ) is rated at 16amp whereas to the left, the downstairs sockets breaker is rated at 32amp.

Checking my consumer unit both socket circuits are rated at 32 amp.

Also the fridge is on the same RCB as the upstairs sockets, and you say the fridge breaker trips sometimes, so maybe a loose connection inside the consumer unit for that RCB’s connections.

Not read the thread but my first thought is why are the upstairs sockets not put on the RCD protected side? Could be because they are unlikely to be used outside (as per quite old regs) or could be because there was a fault.

Anyway, the fault is serious, anything that can trip an MCB (as opposed to an RCD) is much more likely to cause a fire.

Alternatively, switch it on when you can, and walk around upstairs. See if it trips at a similar point every time.

Either way you need an electrician pretty urgently. They can test the circuit and break it down to find the fault.i don't think there's any magic short cut, it sounds like a pain of a fault to find to be honest!

We had this my bast@#rd cat had sprayed one of the sockets and it had run down in the socket and was tripping the circuit.

@johnd2

i believe all mcbs are protected by an rcb, it’s just for some reason the electrician has configured the rcbs to the left of each bank of mcbs.

I think it says "spare" which is why the breakers are off. But unclear though.

Also people keep mentioning "fridge" but I don't see which one is allocated to that.

You are right re the upstairs socket breaker rating. If there are a lot of sockets on it and they are running high power devices then 16A could be a bit on the low side. Really depends on what they are running off it, but a 2kW heater would take approx 10A of that 16A on its own.

Apologies, it clearly says cooker on the rightmost breaker.
But OP did mention fridge and oven go off, so my point about loose connections on that particular rcb remains.