Clamp meter

[Southern22]

Got a bit of fault finding to do at the weekend for a friend who says there sockets trip randomly. Would any of you suggest getting a clamp meter (looking for any excuse to buy one)? Already got a megger so will carry out the suitable tests but as an apprentice I've only ever seen them at college and I thought they would be handy for checking for overload?

 

[Octopus]

I'd be extremely surprised if overload was the problem. Whats plugged in?

 

[Richard Burns]

Clamp meters are useful for checking the current actually drawn on a circuit.
However random socket circuit tripping is (depending on what is actually tripping) a nightmare to find as you have to be measuring when the fault occurs, which is not very likely.
If you were to get a clamp meter then if you are only doing domestic get one that can cover both earth leakage and up to at least 50A, then you do not need two meters to cover the jobs. admittedly the earth leakage meters are more expensive, but can be useful at times.

 

[topquark]

Don't think clamp Meter would help much here. As it's "random" tripping, it would tell you how close to tripping the system was before the random event occurs. Do you know if the "tripping" is overload or l/n imbalance?

 

[Engineer54]

As suggested above, an earth leakage clamp is the way to go here. And as i've stated many times now, i can't understand why every electrician working in the domestic/commercial sector doesn't already have such test kit, seeing how RCD protection is basically the norm these days....

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