Booked online at 5am, we attended by 6:30am and traced a tripping RCD to a faulty boiler in Radcliffe-on-Trent.
A quick summary of this project
This early-morning emergency call-out took place in Radcliffe-on-Trent, NG12. The customer booked through our website at 5am after their RCD kept tripping, and our engineer was on site by 6:30am.
Fault-finding traced the problem to a faulty boiler. We isolated the boiler from the electrical supply and restored power to the rest of the property.
What the customer's situation was before we got involved
In the early hours of the morning, the RCD at the property kept tripping. Each trip cut the supply to the circuits it protects, and resetting it didn’t fix the problem because the fault was still there.
An RCD that won’t stay on is disruptive at any time, and especially early in the morning when you’re trying to start the day. The customer needed someone to find what was causing the trips and get the power back on safely. They booked an emergency electrician through our website at 5am.
The work carried out on this job
After the online booking came in at 5am, our engineer attended the property in Radcliffe-on-Trent at 6:30am.
An RCD trips when it detects electricity leaking to earth, which usually means there is a fault on one of the circuits or appliances it protects. The RCD itself is normally doing its job, so the aim is to find what is causing it to trip.
Our engineer carried out fault-finding to narrow down the source. The investigation traced the problem to the boiler. A fault in the boiler was causing the RCD to trip and take the supply off with it.
To make the installation safe and get the property working again, we isolated the faulty boiler from the electrical supply. With the boiler disconnected, the RCD held, and we restored power to the rest of the property.
The job shows how one faulty appliance can take down a whole RCD-protected group of circuits. Tracing the fault to the boiler meant the customer got their power back without the boiler continuing to trip the supply.
More photos from this job
Common questions about this project
Yes. A boiler is an electrical appliance as well as a heating appliance, and an electrical fault inside it can leak current to earth and trip the RCD. On this Radcliffe-on-Trent call-out, a faulty boiler was causing the RCD to trip repeatedly until it was isolated from the supply.
Try switching off or unplugging appliances on the affected circuits, then reset the RCD once. If it trips again straight away, leave it off and don’t keep resetting it, because it’s reacting to a fault. An electrician can trace the cause, isolate the faulty item and restore power to everything else.
An electrician can trace an electrical fault to a boiler and isolate it safely. Repairing the boiler itself is a job for a qualified heating engineer, and a Gas Safe registered engineer for a gas boiler. Until the boiler is repaired, it stays isolated so it can’t keep tripping the supply.
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