All power trips.

[Dannychop9]

Hi all,

I'm here for just a little bit of advice and I'll make it quick.

I have a sump pump for draining water in my cellar, only a cheap one I installed myself. Its plugged into the mains and last night I accidentally left it running. I think the motor has burnt out and it tripped everything. All sockets and lighting the lot!

I was wondering should this trip everything? Or should it just trip a socket circuit?

Cheers.

Dan

 

[Pete999]

How many RCDs are on the consumers unit?

 

[telectrix]

as above ^^^. it's probably taken out a RCD. new pump is the solution. buy one with a built-in float switch soit automatically switches off when the water level is low.

 

[pc1966]

Just to explain the above. Probably your house has a CU (consumer unit) with one, or maybe two RCD (residual current device) that serve to provide additional protection in the event of a low current fault to earth. For example, accidentally cutting an extension lead with a lawnmower while in contact with the metal mower & ground.

For each circuit you then have a MCB (miniature circuit breaker) or, in older systems a fuse, that serves to protect against overload or major faults to earth, such as cutting a cable and shorting out the ends at the same time.

So if your pump motor has gone short inside it would take out the fuse in the 13A plug, and just possibly the MCB feeding those sockets. However, if it has got water in and a small earth fault then it would trip the RCD instead and that feeds multiple circuits in your CU.

In the ideal world everyone would have CU with RCBO which combine RCD and MCB in the one unit, that way a fault on one circuit only takes out that circuit and not the lights, etc. Over time RCBO have come down in price to make that reasonable now, but you are still looking at a couple of hundred pound difference so you still see dual RCD boards in common use (or even a single RCD on quite old systems as they cost a lot with first introduced).