Faulty RCB unit in 2001 Swift Charisma

[Alf1]

I had a problem this weekend on a CC site where I discovered that my mains cable had a loose connection inside the reel holding my mains cable. This resulted in the bollard I was connected to for mains electric 'blowing.' The warden came to my aid but when we discovered and fixed tha loose wire in my cable reel the RCB unit in my caravan continued to cut out on the circuit supplying power to the sockets. I had all other facilities on the two remining circuits but not on the sockets circ. I left the offending circuit switched off for 24 hrs and tried again.....suddenly we had power with no more 'blowing' of this circuit. Does anyone out ther have any idea what was happening.

swiftman

 

[BigAl1]

Hi Alf

Why would a circuit trip and then not trip some 24 hours later? Did damp get into any part of the circuit which then dried out? Do you have an external socket that could have got wet or damp?

Just a suggestion.

Al

 

[full timer]

I have come across faulty mcb's before, they work for a while then trip out, when left off for a while will work again untill it happens again, if its on the sockets it will be the 10 amp one

 

[RichardJ]

Hi Alf

There are two main possibles, one you had damp in some part of the circuit, two the mcb was very hot.

Damp: may have dried out curing the problem, but this seems to be unlikely.

Hot Mcb: The most likely, when the mcb was tripping, the effect is the mcb get hot, then it will not re-set, it needs to cool first, that will of course depend on the number of times it tripped, and how many time you attempted to re-set.

 

[Alf1]

Thakns for all the comments and suggestions folks. The CC warden ad I probably tried o reset the RCB unit lots of times, perhaps suggesting the overheating problem mentioned.

I will however need to have the unit checked before going to Spain in the summer when we operate a caravan freezer and small electrical appliances from the awning. Before anyone has a heart attack we have done this for more than 20 years with no problem since all of our equipment is geared to work from a 6-10 amp mains supply.

Alf