A fried slug took out our power
Safety switch tripped at home, taking out all of our power points, including fridge.
Fried slug!
Fortunately, we were able to find an electrician (Chris from Lexity Plumbing & Electrical Melbourne) to come out to solve the mystery.
Final diagnosis:
- The existing “Lanson” safety switch model has known problems. See first photo.
- Replaced the old safety switch and circuit switches with two “Voltex” switches with built-in safety tripping. See third photo.
- Even with the new switches, it kept tripping.
- Laborious inspection of the power points on the ground floor discovered a bedroom power point, still warm, with a slug (or something) fried across the terminals. See photo.
$1000 and more than half a day gone 😞.
Not our preferred “tripping”.
Better than a fire, though, hey.
Hager for the win - you do get what you pay for
Building a new house - Hager
I don’t think the problem here was ANYTHING to do with cheap breakers. They did the job they’re designed to do.
Could back it up too.
2.0kW brands like Haier/Midea/Stiebel
2.7kW brands like Aquatech, aquaplus, Neopower, aether, Veissman, emerald, apricus,dux
4.0kW iStore, EVO, Sanden, reclaim
I agree low power ones are shit
I agree medium power ones with huge tanks are also shit for large demands as they aren't up to the job and life is measured in running hours not years.
I don't agree high power ones are shit at all, they last 50% longer than the medium shit ones and 100% longer than the low powered shit ones.
They have timers built in to aim running times for warmer parts of the day.
I work for iStore - Air to Energy
We have 50,000+ Heatpumps installed from Byron to Broome and Darwin to Hobart over 12 years.
More than 10% of Aussie homes now have one so better penetration than EVs vs ICE.
Gap between a Heatpump and electric hottie drives an EV 17,000 KMS a year
High powered ones don't.
Need 1000W compressor heating power per person in the house and the reheat time is fine.
Not rocket science at all.
Can't heat and cool the church hall with a 2.5kW bargain basement split system so why not simply specify heat pump with enough grunt to meet the demands.
Therefore it was a earth leakage fault and not over current.
Mandatory testing before re-energising. What’s that? 🤦🏻♂️
I hope you didn’t pay them $1000
So just from that gpo there’s a minimum of another 3 gpo off it.
It could be a 5 minute job or a 5 hour job.
That’s part of the switchboard works.
Disappointing they didn’t complete the job
We renovated the family home and of course, being a qualified electrician and contractor I wasn’t going to let any old sparky wire my house.
Anyway, within literally 6weeks of moving back in, the front power circuit kept randomly tripping. No issues with appliances or fixed equipment. I just couldn’t understand what the cause was. I knew where all the cables were and terminations were top class 😁.
Anyway, finally decided to start fault finding.
Split the circuit into two legs, meggered each leg, continued to break the circuit down. Finally found the offender. One of the new GPOs was internally shorted. I was pretty pissed to be honest. Fault finding can be frustrating at best.
As I was working at my desk, GPO laying facedown, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I couldn’t believe it. A live slug was exiting one of the screw holes….. this guy had been shocked with 500Volts DC about 50 times.
Once it was out, I gave the GPO a wipe over and tested again. You guessed it. Completely clear.
To this day, I still tell to my clients when I’m fault finding. Moral of the story, never assume the fault will be something obvious.
Cheers and happy fault finding. 💪👍
It may trip an MCB or an RCBO if the overload that it is causing is high enough for either the thermal or magnetic element to pick up.
Should always find the fault before upgrading the protection device.