Hi,

Note: This post is talking about UK (220-240V mains supply)

My girlfriend and I recently moved into our newly-purchased house. We
wanted to get the electric meter changed but when the guy came out to
do so, he reported a live reading on the neutral block in our meter
box. This was potentially dangerous, he said, and he called out the
mains engineers. They investigated and couldn't replicate the problem.
They asked if we'd experienced any problems in the house and we hadn't.

Since then we've had three occurrences of the RCDs in our fuse box
tripping. I today bought a standard socket tester and tested every
socket in the house. I've found the culprit to be the mains outlet in
our spare bedroom, which appears to be incorrectly wired, showing a
live/neutral reverse on the tester.

My questions, then...

1) Would this explain both the apparent live neutral reading in our
main meter box and the tripping of the RCDs? I always thought RCDs were
only concerned with earthing faults, not live/neutral reverse polarity
type problems

2) I've been using the sockets in that room with no real probles apart
from the trips. All equipment (TV, XBox, amplifier, phone charger) have
worked OK thus far. Is the socket likely to be causing any harm?

3) Is this potentially dangerous?

4) Is getting this fixed a big (and ergo, expensive) job?


Your help would be much appreciated as I've had surprising difficult
finding any info about this on the web.

Many thanks

Andy