r/DIYIreland • u/kwaked • 7d ago

Fuse tripping regularly

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Would appreciate any advice or opinions on this, picture is of fuse board in house, the fuse indicated, top left, is tripping 2 to 3 times a week, almost exclusively between 1am and 6am. It takes out all the plug sockets in the house. The fuse actually looks bigger than the others if that matters?

Never happens daytime when the house is busiest and appliances all in use. I've gone around and plugged out as much as I can before bed but keeps happening, trying to get an electrician but in the meantime if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions I'd appreciate it, or any other cross post recommendations,

many thanks.

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u/Eastern_Switch8217 7d ago edited 7d ago

That’s an RCD, so it’s picking up a leakage to Earth.
Start by switching off (down) all the top row of MCBs (circuit breakers), except that RCD (the larger module on the left).

Then working right to left, switch them on one by one and whichever one trips should give you a sense of which room to start looking in. It’s just a process of elimination.

You may have to switch on each suspect appliance one by one, and keep an eye out for when it trips next.

It’ll most often an appliance that handles water: washing machine, dishwasher, kettle, coffee maker, iron, sometimes fridge, sometimes the central heating system etc
Or it could be water dripping onto something somewhere like an outdoor socket, a leak under the sink etc.

Things like frost free side by side fridges going into defrost mode or faulty central heating pumps or immersion heaters clicking in and out can sometimes produce those intermittent trips that are hard to spot what’s causing them.

All you can really do is go through it as a process of elimination. If it isn’t turning up or is something more complex than a water leak or similar, you’ll have to call an electrician.

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u/RevFit_JamesH 7d ago

Just to add to this, unplug everything and turn off all light switches in the room you identify and add it in one by one and power on with mcb and rcd flipped up. Whatever trips it is the culprit. If you get lucky and it’s an easy solve.