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John Rumm John Rumm is offline
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Default electrical problem

Peter wrote:

when the rcd was put back on neither the cesspit pump nor the fountain pumps
worked but garage doors sockets and lights ok


What make are the MCBs in the garage CU?

finally after tripping all switches in the garage box and turning on one by
one all starts to work again (not auto gates)
until the next day when cesspit overflows.

pump extracted, floats shaken a little, nothing. cesspit pump box (seperate
from fuse box) has a tripper switch off/on...pump works.


A couple of options here; either there was power, but the pump (probably
an induction motor) had stalled at start-up. Powering off and on gave it
a kick and it started again. Alternatively I have also found some MCBs
that go faulty in a way that means they do not actually reconnect the
power every time you turn them on. This can make fault fining very
confusing since they look on, but it is random as to whether they
actually are.

The question is are all these things related? If not are pumps and a motor
really all expiring at the same time? Is there any fault in a fusebox/supply
that can display these problems.


It seems unlikely that they would all fail together. However the chap
testing the gates may have been doing insulation resistance checks on
the gate equipment. If he did not take care to protect devices like RCDs
connected to other parts of the system, there is a small chance he may
have damaged them.

Why can I switch the fountain pumps on then nothing, change nothing other
than having all other trippers off then switch it on again and they work.


See above.

Also check the supply voltage. A low supply will make it far more likely
that things like pumps will fail to spin up.



--
Cheers,

John.

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