Example of a fault but what would you do?

[Paul.M]

Its way to easy for anyone of you lot to get the correct answer so I wont bother on this one, just want to now how you would fix it?


A house has been unoccupied for about 6 months and all the power has been turned off so no central heating. On returning to the house the owner turns on one mcb at a time and everything is fine (none rcd cu btw). There is only one rcbo in the board for all of the down stair sockets and this will not reset. The owner then sees an wall dripping wet through due to a drain pipe outside leaking onto the outside wall that has cause extreme damp/condensation to the inertia wall with 2 sockets on it that are dripping wet through.


Obviously this is the first thing we would look at but I want to know what you would do once you turn up at this womans house and why?

 

[trev]

Rig an extension from upstairs RFC so she could get the kettle on?

 

[Paul.M]

Rig an extension from upstairs RFC so she could get the kettle on?

Other ways of by-passing this wet wall so we can "test" the kettle mate

 

[Floody]

Well ive not done domestic stuff really, only industrial. but i think I'd lock off the power to the whole house until the leak was identified and controlled by a qualified person, just because there's a visible wet wall, doesn't mean there isn't an invisible puddle gathering above the ceiling too (or any other wet walls)

Fix leak, remove old effected circuit(s), install new circuit(s), test, pass, cert. Home!!!

 

[Baker1988]

Its probily keeps tripping cos water is getting inside the back box and shorting earth to either live or neutral as it hasn't been used for 6 month the back boxes will be full of water and probily all rusted, I would lock off the rcbo and test to make sure circuit is dead then take off the socket fronts and replace the back box of the sockets for new ones then replace the front and connect it all back up and should be fine, then tell the customer that they need to get the leak fixed or it will just happen again, I wouldn't turn off all the power to the house till it was fixed as we cant really leave them with no electric even if it was dangerous we cant turn there electric off

 

[Floody]

Better them be without electric for a few days than get a soaking belt

 

[Baker1988]

Better them be without electric for a few days than get a soaking belt

Yeah I totally agree with you but as we are taught at college we cant turn there electric off without there permission no matter how dangerous it is unless obviously we make it that dangerous for doing something stupid

 

[Paul.M]

Baker post 5 is great. This is what I would do:-

Lock off and hang sign on the rcbo.
Test sockets for dead.
Take off the 2 offending sockets. Visual always comes first so look at the back of the socket to see if it has water on it.
Connect the legs at the 2 sockets (I use Wago's), go to the cu and do your end to end continuity tests, then IR tests to ensure there is no faults. If everything is fine with the circuit and the connectors at the sockets are in no danger of getting wet or touched by hand (dont forget every connection needs to be min IP2x) just use a double blank plate for the sockets and put the wago's in a plastic money bag with an elastic band around it and pointing upwards so no water can run down the cable into the wago's.
Your tests have proven that the circuit is now fine and you can re-connect the rcbo and switch on. Put the kettle on and whilst having a brew with the customer tell her she needs to get a builder in to fix the drain pipe and re-point the outside wall so it dose not happen again. Once this is done and the inertia wall has dried out, go back and fix a new back box if needed and connect back up two new sockets.

Floody I know what you mean about water getting in else where and causing problems but in this case it was just the kitchen wall. A good point though.