In article ,
says...
Hi,

I'm a bit bemused...

I turned off the 'ground floor sockets' on my 'fusebox' (or whatever they're
called these days) whilst fitting some new, well, sockets. I had 5 to do
and all was going well. I checked each one with a socket tester first just
to make sure it wasn't live. I got to the last one, inserted the live
wires - fine. The earth - fine. As I went to put the neutral in place I
was plunged into darkness (my gf wasn't impressed - she was up a ladder
painting the downstairs loo at the time).

Thankfully I managed to find a torch in the pitch black and reset the
circuit breaker.

Could my socket tinkering (remembering that the sockets were OFF at the
time) have contributed in any way to the blackout or must it have been
something else. How do I find out what caused it?

BTW - after the power was restored, I used the socket tester on each of the
newly fitted sockets and it reported everything as a-ok. I also used a
power tester screwdriver on the visible screwheads just in case something
had gone amiss - nothing!

TIA,

Daz




The most likely cause is that you got a brief short between earth &
neutral (maybe one of the neutrals stroked the earthed strip on the back
of the socket plate?), which allowed a small amount of current (from the
other loads in the house, lights etc) to bypass the main RCD, which
unbalanced it, and caused just the effect that they are designed for. At
a guess you have an earth rod?