Topic: What to do if your electric has gone off?
Introduction:
Electricity is the most important part of our lives since most of the appliances working in our homes use electricity.
But having so many appliances in the home can cause problems if not installed properly or they are becoming antiquated.
So your electric has gone off, what to do now?
Check it yourself:
Most common causes of the electric going off in the home are from overloaded circuits or a short circuit, these can trip either the MCB, RCD or both, plus you could have other safety devices in your consumer unit like the ones listed below so you need to determine what has turned off in the consumer unit.
In your fuseboard (consumer unit) you could have different types of circuit protection:
RCD – Residual Current Device
RCBO – Residual Current Breaker with Over-Current
MCB – Miniture Circuit Breaker
AFDD – Arc Fault Detection Device
SPD – Surge Protection Device
These are all essential safety devices of any property that uses electricity.
(if your consumer unit is an older type you may only have fuses where you would have to change the fuse wire or put a new fuse in)
Most problems can be either faulty appliances or light bulbs that have blown so you have two options:
- Usually you can un-plug all the appliances in your home reset the affected circuit and then plug appliances back in one by one until it trips again then you would know what appliance is faulty.
- Turn off all lights reset the the affected circuit and then turn on the lights in your home one by one to see if it trips the circuit again and you will then know where the problem is.
However if you have tried to reset the MCB/RCD or change the fuse and the circuit blows immediately again with everything un-plugged or turned off or nothing happens, you will need to call an electrician as the problem could be the wiring itself.
Our small guide on what to do if your electricity stops working may help you in times of need. Having no electricity can inconvenience you, but in some cases it is easy to diagnose.
Always remember to contact a qualified registered electrician if there is a major issue with your electrics.
Our team at EcoGreen Electrical can help you. We are experts in fault finding and fixing electrics. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or queries.
