Discuss Installed a new C/U now have fault in the UK Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

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New here so sorry if posted in wrong place,
I have installed a new consumer unit as the title says it’s a split load rcd board, anyway to the point one of the rings seems to now have a neutral fault which is taking out one side of the board I have checked all obvious things, touched no appliances since installing only moved the existing wiring to the new board location etc. The thing that I can’t get my head round is I have continuity end to end but on both legs of the ring I have a short between live and neutral, all I can think of now is to IRT the circuit and see maybe this could be down the the install being 30 years old and degraded T&E over time? Maybe the inner cores are now touching? Seems funny tho because the old c/u was old but was still rcd protected so surely that would of seen the fault? And surely both legs wouldn’t have sustained damaged when I’ve moved the cables?
can give me details if required thanks in advance
 
30 years is nothing for decent PVC wire that has not been abused (thermally or physically).

As above, did you do an IR test before all the circuits were re-connected and put in to use?

L-N or L-E faults are pretty obvious no matter what the old CU was, but N-E could have been there for years and without an RCD nobody would have notice.
 
As Tel says, more precise measurements, rather than a "short" which is somewhat vague and not very helpful.

For example, if a fraction of an Ohm N to E, then it is often easy to track down where in the wiring this is.

Also, do you have measurements for all the other circuits on this RCD that is tripping? E.g. a N to E short on a circuit that didn't used to have RCD protection, on this RCD, now causing the socket circuit to trip when under load.

I'm sort of assuming you do have an MFT and did make some measurements?
 
Last edited:
did you not do a EICR before hand .
Don’t need to do an EICR beforehand, what difference would that make? When upgrading the consumer unit you have to do an install certificate anyway, Going back to the OP you need to use your tester to find the fault now, Split the ring at board then guess mid point one side should be clear with high readings the other 0 by swnds of it. Chase the fault is pretty much really easy when you understand the logic
 
The reason we do an EICR before hand, or at the very least a site survey with some testing as the minimum, (as recommended I’m the best practice guide), is to find and iron out any problems prior to fitting a new board.

You should also be carrying out a full range of tests before energising the board and not just doing the bang test to bring it into service.
 
Re-reading the OP's post it does sound like that act of moving the cables over has triggered a fault.

However, before it was all live I would have expected the usual test to have shown this up (IR, ring continuity, R2 or R1+R2 for lights, etc, etc).

Irrespective of how they got here, the next step for the OP is to do fault-finding to identify what the issue is. So take the final circuits out and IR test them (loads off/unplugged) and when the offending circuit is identified, then do the usual process to locate the fault (e.g. split half-way and see if it is a fault in the 1st or 2nd half, rinse and repeat...)
 

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