Hello,

I seem to be having some problems in my house with the socket circuit.

1) A couple of the sockets will power a low voltage light but not a
hair dryer
2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV
3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.

Before I call an electrician can someone give me some ideas of where
the problem could lie.

Thanks

"tvmo" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I seem to be having some problems in my house with the socket circuit.

1) A couple of the sockets will power a low voltage light but not a
hair dryer

Are there any wall switches in the same room that turn these sockets on and
off? If so, they're probably meant for lighting only.

2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV

Frequency issues? Don't understand.

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.

Have you got an RCD in the fusebox or do you mean that it trips the regular
circuit breaker? Not uncommon for heating elements in ovens and washing
machines to "leak" to earth causing RCDs to trip.

Tim

tvmo coughed up some electrons that declared:

Hello,

I seem to be having some problems in my house with the socket circuit.

1) A couple of the sockets will power a low voltage light but not a
hair dryer

Probably a loose connection. Might be other things, but if it were me, I'd
isolate the circuit, prove it dead, and go round and tighten all the
terminals starting with the bad sockets - ideally check the lot. At the
same time, I'd look carefully and see if anything's got hot as this is a
possibility - may need to replace anything which has overheated. Probably
won't take an electrician long to resolve this unless it turns out to be a
cable fault, in which case, it depends...

2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV

You mean interference? I'm guessing the mains filter in the dishwasher may
have gone bad, but I don't really know for sure. How old is the machine?

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.

Is it tripping an RCD or blowing a fuse/tripping an MCB?

Before I call an electrician can someone give me some ideas of where
the problem could lie.

Thanks

Seems like you may have a combination of problems, hopefully reasonably
inexpensive to rectify, but problems 1 and 3 demand urgent attention
because something is clearly not happy and it's sounds unsafe. Don't use
the problem sockets obviously until they're fixed.

Cheers

Tim

Tim S wrote:

tvmo coughed up some electrons that declared:

Hello,

I seem to be having some problems in my house with the socket circuit.

1) A couple of the sockets will power a low voltage light but not a
hair dryer

Probably a loose connection. Might be other things, but if it were me, I'd
isolate the circuit, prove it dead, and go round and tighten all the
terminals starting with the bad sockets - ideally check the lot. At the
same time, I'd look carefully and see if anything's got hot as this is a
possibility - may need to replace anything which has overheated. Probably
won't take an electrician long to resolve this unless it turns out to be a
cable fault, in which case, it depends...

2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV

You mean interference? I'm guessing the mains filter in the dishwasher may
have gone bad, but I don't really know for sure. How old is the machine?

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.

Is it tripping an RCD or blowing a fuse/tripping an MCB?

Before I call an electrician can someone give me some ideas of where
the problem could lie.

Thanks

Seems like you may have a combination of problems, hopefully reasonably
inexpensive to rectify, but problems 1 and 3 demand urgent attention
because something is clearly not happy and it's sounds unsafe. Don't use
the problem sockets obviously until they're fixed.

Cheers

Tim

Pretty good summary. Number 3 might be seirous, but more likely not a
significant safety problem. If you dont know your MCBs from your RCDs,
just post a pic of the fusebox.


NT

wrote:
Tim S wrote:

tvmo coughed up some electrons that declared:

Hello,

I seem to be having some problems in my house with the socket circuit.

1) A couple of the sockets will power a low voltage light but not a
hair dryer
Probably a loose connection. Might be other things, but if it were me, I'd
isolate the circuit, prove it dead, and go round and tighten all the
terminals starting with the bad sockets - ideally check the lot. At the
same time, I'd look carefully and see if anything's got hot as this is a
possibility - may need to replace anything which has overheated. Probably
won't take an electrician long to resolve this unless it turns out to be a
cable fault, in which case, it depends...

2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV
You mean interference? I'm guessing the mains filter in the dishwasher may
have gone bad, but I don't really know for sure. How old is the machine?

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.
Is it tripping an RCD or blowing a fuse/tripping an MCB?

Before I call an electrician can someone give me some ideas of where
the problem could lie.

Thanks
Seems like you may have a combination of problems, hopefully reasonably
inexpensive to rectify, but problems 1 and 3 demand urgent attention
because something is clearly not happy and it's sounds unsafe. Don't use
the problem sockets obviously until they're fixed.

Cheers

Tim

Frequency issues, does the hight of the picture decrease / a lamp pluged
in dim?

If so it sounds like you have a serious voltage regulation issue. Please
send a picture of your fuse box, and you may wish to call your
selectivity company to check their side of the supply.

tvmo wrote:
Hello,

I seem to be having some problems in my house with the socket circuit.

1) A couple of the sockets will power a low voltage light but not a
hair dryer

What happens when you try to run the hair dryer?

2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV

You mean you get a noise pattern on the screen - say lines with bright
speckles on them?

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.

Trips what exactly? The circuit breaker for the individual circuit, or
the RCD protecting a group of circuits or possibly even the whole house?

Before I call an electrician can someone give me some ideas of where
the problem could lie.

Bit more info required first. However these faults may well not be related.

--
Cheers,

John.

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1)What happens when you try to run the hair dryer?

On one of the sockets it doesn't work, on another socket the hair
dryer blows air in pulses, on the majority of sockets it blows air
evenly

2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV

You mean you get a noise pattern on the screen - say lines with bright
speckles on them?

Yes, exactly - sorry about the poor description

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.

Trips what exactly? The circuit breaker for the individual circuit, or
the RCD protecting a group of circuits or possibly even the whole house?

The whole house trips.


Thanks

tvmo wrote:

OK, probably worth noting that all these faults are probably unrelated.

1)What happens when you try to run the hair dryer?

On one of the sockets it doesn't work, on another socket the hair
dryer blows air in pulses, on the majority of sockets it blows air
evenly

This could be a number of things. The most likely being loose
connections on the sockets - causing sparking and intermittent supply to
the dryer. The lower power requirements of the lamp may mean less local
heating and hence less movement of the wires.

Alternatively it may be you have a serious voltage drop issue. Either a
section of seriously undersized cable in a circuit, or a high resistance
connection. These options would fit the symptom better if the dryer was
a type with soft touch controls (i.e. electronic rather than mechanical
switching), where the low voltage might cause it to behave incorrectly.

*** in either case, this fault is serious and needs investigating as a
matter of urgency ***

High resistance or arcing connections are a fire risk. I would suggest
not using the sockets (and probably the circuit) in question until this
is fixed.

Some more background he

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?...Circuit_Faults


2) Switching on the dish washer, which is on a separate ring to the
majority of the sockets in my house, causes frequency issues on my TV
You mean you get a noise pattern on the screen - say lines with bright
speckles on them?

Yes, exactly - sorry about the poor description

I would expect the mains input filter on the dishwasher, or possibly the
noise suppression caps on the motor have failed. Probably not a house
wiring fault - although it is possible it could be related to a bad
connection on part of a ring circuit.

3) The washer dryer frequently trips the electric.
Trips what exactly? The circuit breaker for the individual circuit, or
the RCD protecting a group of circuits or possibly even the whole house?

The whole house trips.

The washer dryer is probably faulty. It may be the heating element is
leaking current to earth (not uncommon as they age), or water has got
into parts of the machine they should not have.

The other possibility is that you have just have too many circuits on
the same RCD and it is as a result pre-sensitised. In these cases the
switching transients of things like thermostatically controlled heaters
cutting in and out may be enough to cause a trip.

See the nuisance trips section of the RCD FAQ:

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?...Nuisance_trips

The problem is compounded by you having a single RCD protecting all of
the circuits in the house. This no longer considered and acceptable way
of wiring, but there was a time where this was common. A consumer unit
upgrade would separate the protection for the circuits into groups such
that you don't loose all at once, and also reduce the likelihood of
trips in the first place as a result of the cumulative leakage being
excessive for a single RCD.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Rumm wrote:

The problem is compounded by you having a single RCD protecting all of
the circuits in the house.

It sounds as if this could be quite an old installation, so the single
device might, perhaps, be a voltage operated ELCB.

--
Andy