Electrical fault next door tripping my RCD
Discussion
Last week my neighbour had some building work done and they damaged the cable to his cooker. This caused my main RCD to cut out. It took a while for them to work out what the problem was, so over a couple of days our RCD went 5 or 6 times. Their RCD also tripped.
These are old houses with an earth rod if that's relevant.
Why would a fault on their house cause my RCD to go - does this imply some sort of problem with the supply? The electrician that fixed it told me that the fault was a live to earth short.
The incoming supply was a cable from a post until earlier this year when the post was taken down and an underground cable put in.
These are old houses with an earth rod if that's relevant.
Why would a fault on their house cause my RCD to go - does this imply some sort of problem with the supply? The electrician that fixed it told me that the fault was a live to earth short.
The incoming supply was a cable from a post until earlier this year when the post was taken down and an underground cable put in.
98elise said:
Sounds odd rcd's usually measure the current difference between live and neutral. The assumption is the difference is going to earth, therefore an issue.
Sure, but a spike happenning in the vicinity can induce a large enough spike in a nearby cable. Imagine that their cable is running up one side of the wall, and your cable is running up the other side. This makes two halves of a transformer, a poor transformer, but if there's an intermittent short on one side, that'll be drawing 30 Amps, and you only need 1 millionth of that to make it over to trip an RCD.RCD's correctly installed shouldn't, theoretically, do this (trip out "in sympathy")
- Is yours definitely an RCD not an old voltage breaker? If so is it working in spec?
- Are the earth spike(s) shared/ very close together? If so could try separating
- Earth bonding to gas/water in place? If not make so.
TooLateForAName said:
Last week my neighbour had some building work done and they damaged the cable to his cooker. This caused my main RCD to cut out. It took a while for them to work out what the problem was, so over a couple of days our RCD went 5 or 6 times. Their RCD also tripped.
These are old houses with an earth rod if that's relevant.
Why would a fault on their house cause my RCD to go - does this imply some sort of problem with the supply? The electrician that fixed it told me that the fault was a live to earth short.
The incoming supply was a cable from a post until earlier this year when the post was taken down and an underground cable put in.
If the connection to the earth rod is rusty or electrically poor then any voltage on that cable wont be conducted to earth. Having a voltage present on the earth cable is bad news and may cause problems with RCDs and ELCBs. These are old houses with an earth rod if that's relevant.
Why would a fault on their house cause my RCD to go - does this imply some sort of problem with the supply? The electrician that fixed it told me that the fault was a live to earth short.
The incoming supply was a cable from a post until earlier this year when the post was taken down and an underground cable put in.
Someone's already suggested separating your connection from next door's, which would need a new earth rod for your connection, but it may just need the connection cleaning. It would be a good idea to kill the power before touching the connection, if there is a fault condition it may kill you!
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