Had a problem with a faulty circuit breaker ( 2 pin earth leakage type) that was installed concurrently with new roof insulation. I replaced it and all seemed well, but was not.
A year or so, on and a couple of tenants downstairs later, the same circuit breaker started to play up again. I quickly established that anything plugged into just this one of the several power points that particular circuit in the building would immediately cause the circuit breaker to thow out. My first reaction was, "its impossible", as any fault I could think of was invariably going to cause a fault regardless of what was connected. It was also bad news because there was no easy way to replace the cabling in that part of the house.
I did a "hopeful"change of the possibly faulty socket plate, and that made no difference as expected. About 12 hours later my brain finally clicked and the diagnoses was correct.
The problem was that the neutral wire out of the last power point in the problem circuit was returned to the earth of the 2nd last power point in the circuit instead of to its neutral.
The problem had existed for 20-30 years, but was not important when only fuses were in place. Any one else seen one like this?
Unusual Mains Electrical Fault
Re: Unusual mains electrical fault
