My problem is this - My iron trips the circuit breaker on the power side of
the House fuse board. This is a relatively new iron definitely less than 6
months old. We purchased the new iron because the old iron was doing the
same thing. Until this week I suspected that the problem was linked to the
wall socket, but 2 days ago the same thing happened while the iron was
plugged in to a socket in a different room.

My question is this - should I suspect that the new iron had developed a
short, or is the problem more likely to be related to the house power
circuits.

The new iron is a different make from the old one so its unlikely to be a
design fault in the iron.

Many thanks for reading this far.

Phil