House ring main failed - help!

[Tracy D'arth]

9 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

 

Suggesting that its water resistant but not resistant to being continually submerged?

True, PVC is not totally non permeable to water.

 

See this report,     https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/656243.pdf

 

Its a known phenomenon of many plastics. 

[Tony Brooks]

Just now, Tracy D'arth said:

True, PVC is not totally non permeable to water.

 

See this report,     https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/656243.pdf

 

Its a known phenomenon of many plastics. 

 

Thanks for confirming. In that case I reckon there is an excellent chance Richard has solved his problem long term

[Tracy D'arth]

2 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

True, PVC is not totally non permeable to water.

 

See this report,     https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/656243.pdf

 

Its a known phenomenon of many plastics. 

It is very bad that cable under a floor in a wet subfloor space are not clipped up away from the wet and puddles in this space are really bad.

 

Is there a leak from a drain or a run off getting into the space or is it a defective oversite concrete allowing the water table to rise into the space?

[ditchcrawler]

29 minutes ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

 

Suggesting that its water resistant but not resistant to being continually submerged?

Not something I have ever experienced, I would suspect a mouse or rat

[Tracy D'arth]

11 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Not something I have ever experienced, I would suspect a mouse or rat

OK, if in doubt blame poor Mickey or Roland.  Innocent rodents, they don't understand electricity.  The worst rodent damage I ever saw was by squirrels.  ( no, mot cast iron ones )

  Easier than blaming the cowboy that draped cables on the wet floor.

[ditchcrawler]

5 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

   The worst rodent damage I ever saw was by squirrels.  ( no, mot cast iron ones )

  

Now they are the worst without doubt, not sure how they get away with so much damage without electrocuting themselves. The old VIR was also favoured by rats/mice but in dry areas again you could get quite a bit of damage before the copped it

[Richard10002]

33 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

It is very bad that cable under a floor in a wet subfloor space are not clipped up away from the wet and puddles in this space are really bad.

 

Agreed. It was done long before we bought the house, and we have had no reason to look under the floor until now. As I said, it’s a bit of a dogs breakfast, so I’m sure we’ll be having it tidied up later in the year.

 

 

33 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

 

Is there a leak from a drain or a run off getting into the space or is it a defective oversite concrete allowing the water table to rise into the space?

 

My guess is it’s water table related. Last week we had lots of rain, and areas nearby were actually flooded. Also the fact that it has soaked away suggests this. Having said that, it could be getting in from outside and above.

 

[Tracy D'arth]

1 minute ago, ditchcrawler said:

Now they are the worst without doubt, not sure how they get away with so much damage without electrocuting themselves. The old VIR was also favoured by rats/mice but in dry areas again you could get quite a bit of damage before the copped it

I had a client who had watched the squirrels run up into his roof for weeks, thought they were cute!

 

Until his heating stopped working. The roof space was a disaster area. Insulation balled up into nests, (drays) cables with insulation gnawed off, roof members reduced to matchwood but the best was the cold water cisterns  gnawed down to the water level. It cost thousands to put right.

[peterboat]

1 hour ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I had a client who had watched the squirrels run up into his roof for weeks, thought they were cute!

 

Until his heating stopped working. The roof space was a disaster area. Insulation balled up into nests, (drays) cables with insulation gnawed off, roof members reduced to matchwood but the best was the cold water cisterns  gnawed down to the water level. It cost thousands to put right.

I had that at a previous house squirrels can do serious damage quickly! 

[1st ade]

13 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

not sure how they get away with so much damage without electrocuting themselves

We had a pet rabbit who was an absolute dab hand (paw?) at nibbling both live and neutral insulation but not electrocuting himself. He'd sit and watch until we moved the standard lamp (or whatever) and there was a big blue flash and a bang. He was confined to his cage after gnawing through a (very expensive) HDMI cable!

[Laurie Booth]

On 21/01/2021 at 02:32, Richard10002 said:

Watching TV this evening when everything went off, or so it seemed. However, when I got to the main fuse box, if I turned off the “downstairs ring main”, the “main switch” that was automatically turning everything off, stayed on.

 

So the problem is somewhere in the downstairs ring main sockets. I turned all the sockets I could find/think of off at their switches, thinking this would remove the problem, then I could turn them on one by one, and the faulty one would cause the switch to throw.

 

Not to be - having turned all the sockets off at the socket switch, turning the downstairs ring main switch on caused the main switch to throw. So I either haven’t found all of the sockets on the ring, or the problem is with the wiring to the sockets, or something else that I can’t think of.

 

I don’t want to waste the time waiting for an electrician if this is something I can diagnose myself, so I wonder if anyone, (an electrician?), has any pointers. I’ve got a few tools and meters, so should be able to do what an electrician would do.... up to a point.

 

Hope that makes sense,

 

Richard

 

BTW: it seems that we have a Kitchen and Garage ring main, so there are some ground floor sockets that work, and I have managed to get critical stuff working with a few extension leads, (TV and Fridge Freezer mainly).

 

 

You have one heck of a big boat

[LEO]

16 hours ago, Tracy D'arth said:

I had a client who had watched the squirrels run up into his roof for weeks, thought they were cute!

 

Until his heating stopped working. The roof space was a disaster area. Insulation balled up into nests, (drays) cables with insulation gnawed off, roof members reduced to matchwood but the best was the cold water cisterns  gnawed down to the water level. It cost thousands to put right.

Interesting, we are near Tring and moor at Cowroast, thanks to Lord Rothchild and his 'Zoo' at Tring, Glis Glis are the problem for us. They chew anything and what they don't chew they crap over. The current Lord R. denies all liabilty, they have spread as far as Amersham.

[Phoenix_V]

2 minutes ago, LEO said:

Interesting, we are near Tring and moor at Cowroast, thanks to Lord Rothchild and his 'Zoo' at Tring, Glis Glis are the problem for us. They chew anything and what they don't chew they crap over. The current Lord R. denies all liabilty, they have spread as far as Amersham.

do they spread covid?

[Tracy D'arth]

7 minutes ago, LEO said:

Interesting, we are near Tring and moor at Cowroast, thanks to Lord Rothchild and his 'Zoo' at Tring, Glis Glis are the problem for us. They chew anything and what they don't chew they crap over. The current Lord R. denies all liabilty, they have spread as far as Amersham.

At least you can eat them.  Handy for when Amazon fail to deliver your grocery.

A woman near us breeds Guinea Pigs, they sell for £45 each!

[Chewbacka]

1 hour ago, Tracy D'arth said:

At least you can eat them.  Handy for when Amazon fail to deliver your grocery.

A woman near us breeds Guinea Pigs, they sell for £45 each!

That’s over a hundred quid for a meal two including wine etc!!!!  Makes Waitrose look cheap.

Though you would have to make do with quails eggs and caviar as they don’t do guinea pig.

Edited January 26, 2021 by Chewbacka

[tree monkey]

17 hours ago, peterboat said:

I had that at a previous house squirrels can do serious damage quickly! 

Grey squirrels are an absolute pest, reds on the other hand.

I would be happy to see a concerted effort to reduce greys numbers, probably is even greys have the cute factor

[Richard10002]

19 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Thanks for confirming. In that case I reckon there is an excellent chance Richard has solved his problem long term

Looks like it Tony

 

My letting agents electrician came this morning. 
He did a proper job of clipping the suspect cable to a joist then opened up the Consumer unit, pulled out the downstairs ring wires from the MCB, (or whatever it is), did a couple of tests for high Ohms, (80 Meg Ohms and 90 Meg Ohms), and a continuity test for low Ohms, (0.35 Ohms), so all good fir the time being.

 

The tests were extremely simple, all done whilst sitting at the Consumer Unit, although I suppose if he had had to chase a problem, it would have been a bit more involved.

 

I plan to get him back when we’ve all been vaccinated and the Covid situation has settled down a bit. The suspect cable could do with replacing, even though it tested fine, and there is a bit of underfloor tidying up that could do with doing.

 

Thanks again to everyone for the help.

[Tracy D'arth]

Glad that it was not too complicated. 80 megs is surprising me considering that the cable was the problem, I would have thought it would be much lower.

[Tony Brooks]

19 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Glad that it was not too complicated. 80 megs is surprising me considering that the cable was the problem, I would have thought it would be much lower.

 

It makes me wonder what voltage he used but pleased it all seems OK.

[ditchcrawler]

35 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said:

Glad that it was not too complicated. 80 megs is surprising me considering that the cable was the problem, I would have thought it would be much lower.

If its a damaged cable, moving it could have cleared it completely and the conductors are just sitting there side by side 

[peterboat]

2 hours ago, tree monkey said:

Grey squirrels are an absolute pest, reds on the other hand.

I would be happy to see a concerted effort to reduce greys numbers, probably is even greys have the cute factor

Grey squirrels are very tasty though

[tree monkey]

2 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Grey squirrels are very tasty though

So I have heard, I wouldn't object to sampling the occasional squirrel pie

[Tracy D'arth]

5 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

So I have heard, I wouldn't object to sampling the occasional squirrel pie

But I don't like hazelnuts!

[Richard10002]

8 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

It makes me wonder what voltage he used but pleased it all seems OK.

He said he was going to feed 500v into it, and made sure there was nothing plugged into any of the sockets.

 

Nice looking machine with a touch screen, although I didn't get close enough to see any detail.

[Tony Brooks]

3 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

He said he was going to feed 500v into it, and made sure there was nothing plugged into any of the sockets.

 

Nice looking machine with a touch screen, although I didn't get close enough to see any detail.

That is what I would have done, not that I am mains experienced.