Charlie wrote:

Electrician is coming asap - will post back when it's sorted.

Sorry for the late post back. I got a second electrician who around
and have a got a clearer idea of what went wrong.
1. There was a faulty face plate which was causing a problem.
2. There is still an intermittent fault on the downstairs ring which
he has now put on it's own separate RCD (not sure if I have explained
this correctly but it now trips only this circuit and not the whole
house)

Couldbe an RCBO but yes it makes sense.

3. He has had problems, despite a number of visits to diagnose exactly
what is causing the intermittent fault. It seems to be a neutral/
earth connection somewhere. This has been made worse by the fact that
the "ring is not a ring". It's seems to be some sort of snowman/
figure of eight (probably caused when the rear extension was added by
the previous owner).

I would have expected a megger to show this fault. However he seems to know
what he is doing.

4. I have since had some floorboards up and found a number of junction
boxes/spurs which might help in simplifying the circuit and turning it
into a radial which will aid the fault diagnosis.


5. With regards to the previous electrician. The new sockets test I
used was fault. It said all the sockets in my own flat were not
earthed either. The house is in fact correctly earthed.

Whoops.

6. However the previous electrician did move the downstairs "ring" on
to a 32amp fuse - which obviously is a cause for concern.

An allowable bypass if the sockets are correctly earthed and it was just a
tempjob.

Will post back when I have more info.

Ta
--
Adam