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Why does my RCD trip overnight and only resets when the kitchen sockets are off?

  • 5 August 2021
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RCD tripped overnight, only resets with kitchen sockets trip off, any help please

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Best answer by PeterR1947 6 August 2021, 10:37

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Blastoise186
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Heya @Malc98 !

Uh oh, that’s not a good sign. You might want to call in a friendly local electrician to take a look and see what’s going on. This sounds like something that’s beyond OVO’s control but we can try to offer some advice.

I’ve gone ahead and tracked down a related forum thread that might also help.

If you’re still stumped after that, please feel free to stop by again. We can’t promise that we can figure this one out for sure, but we’d be happy to try and do some detective work if we’re able to.

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Tim_OVO
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What’s the latest, @Malc98? It’s worth reading that topic’s ‘best answer’ that Blastoise flagged in case it helps. 

 

@PeterR1947 is a bit of a resident leader when it comes to this. He might know some good questions to ask you. 

 

But in general yes, I think an electrician is your best best. There’s a good register for these here. 

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PeterR1947
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Updated on 14/09/23 by Abby_OVO

​​​​​​As your energy supplier, OVO can’t advise what might be causing an issue with your supply beyond the meter (ie a faulty fuse or appliance). We’d recommend contacting an electrician if you don’t feel confident following the advice given by one of our members below.

 

@Malc98  does the RCD still trip if the kitchen sockets trip is on but with nothing plugged in to the sockets?  If so then electrician is the answer; it may just be a faulty RCD or MCB.

If not, then plug in half of the kitchen appliances normally plugged in, lets call that group 1.  If the RCD doesn’t trip you know that a fault may lie with one of the appliances in the other half, Group 2.

If it did trip then the fault is in one of the appliances in Group 1

Then either way, split the group that caused the trip into two again and repeat the exercise again and again if necessary until you only have two suspect appliances when repeating the exercise overnight will reveal the culprit.  Hope that’s clear enough.

Peter

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I agree with @PeterR1947 - you need to do these checks. It will establish whether there is a faulty kitchen appliance or faulty wiring.

Experience tells me that electric cookers and kettles are the most likely culprits, followed by washing machines and dish-washers. These devices not only take high-currents over short intervals to create heat, but also operate with water around them. That’s a classic combination for corroding contacts/connections within the appliance.

Almost all domestic RCDs are rated to trip at 30mA of ‘leakage current’. That’s 30mA which goes out via the live (brown) wire, but doesn’t return on the neutral (blue).

Depending on the age of your house wiring, you might already have several milli-Amps of losses before you have anything plugged in. Your kettle might contribute another 5 or 6mA and the washing machine a couple more.

So long as the 30mA threshold isn’t reached, your RCD will continue to stay closed for years. Everything operates as expected and you are none the wiser.

But eventually there’s possibly a few extra damp crumbs at the bottom of an electric toaster and the RCD suddenly trips out.

It’s not necessarily the toaster’s fault. It might not even be the biggest contributor to reach the 30mA threshold.

So you may not be trying to find a single cause of last night’s RCD failure.

That’s why it helps to follow Peter’s advice and try the kitchen circuit with some appliances connected, but not others.

Let us know how you get on.

 

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