Moved into a refurbed flat a couple of years ago and there were a few suspect things about the electrical work which I’ve not got round to rectifying yet.
I swapped out all the lighting myself over time (funny how all of the installed lamps were incandescent) and noticed that the Bathroom LEDs continued to glow faintly when off, even with the breaker off. Also picked up a lower voltage coming off the neutral on another light I changed, despite the lighting circuit being off.
Seems like a classic case of a borrowed neutral. The bathroom wall had been rebuilt after they moved the HW Cylinder and they’d put it a 2 gang switch for the hall/bathroom lights.
I didn’t manage to trace out the cabling fully to get to the bottom of it due to sudden health issues but it’s been at the back of my mind since.
I’ve got a split board with 2 RCBOs off the main isolator; with lighting on one and power on the other as well as a couple of other circuits for the HW and appliances etc.
There are also two installed breakers marked as Spare but it turns out they’ve both just been disconnected and left in connector blocks behind the panel cover. I didn’t really question the blanked off socket in each room when moving in as I knew there was previously an Economy 7 setup and I assumed they’d just not bothered to connect up that circuit when they left the old E7 supply in a Henly block.
Since there’s only 1 lighting circuit, I figured the crossed neutral might be with the power somewhere but again, I’ve not been able to bell everything out to see.
Reason for the post is that I’ve noticed a high pitched humming noise coming from the bathroom periodically over the past month or so and it’s been driving me mad. It stopped today when I unplugged the charging dock I got for Christmas (one of those ones with several USB outputs at different wattages and QI wireless charger).
Is this purely circumstantial or could that be clue as to the location of the offending neutral?
I swapped out all the lighting myself over time (funny how all of the installed lamps were incandescent) and noticed that the Bathroom LEDs continued to glow faintly when off, even with the breaker off. Also picked up a lower voltage coming off the neutral on another light I changed, despite the lighting circuit being off.
Seems like a classic case of a borrowed neutral. The bathroom wall had been rebuilt after they moved the HW Cylinder and they’d put it a 2 gang switch for the hall/bathroom lights.
I didn’t manage to trace out the cabling fully to get to the bottom of it due to sudden health issues but it’s been at the back of my mind since.
I’ve got a split board with 2 RCBOs off the main isolator; with lighting on one and power on the other as well as a couple of other circuits for the HW and appliances etc.
There are also two installed breakers marked as Spare but it turns out they’ve both just been disconnected and left in connector blocks behind the panel cover. I didn’t really question the blanked off socket in each room when moving in as I knew there was previously an Economy 7 setup and I assumed they’d just not bothered to connect up that circuit when they left the old E7 supply in a Henly block.
Since there’s only 1 lighting circuit, I figured the crossed neutral might be with the power somewhere but again, I’ve not been able to bell everything out to see.
Reason for the post is that I’ve noticed a high pitched humming noise coming from the bathroom periodically over the past month or so and it’s been driving me mad. It stopped today when I unplugged the charging dock I got for Christmas (one of those ones with several USB outputs at different wattages and QI wireless charger).
Is this purely circumstantial or could that be clue as to the location of the offending neutral?