27/04/2021
The fault that sparks worry.
We all love electricity. It lights up our home, our computers, our TVs, almost everything in our lives. We take it for granted that when we press a switch, electricity will be there.
Although many of us don’t, electricity should be treated with care and respect. It is an incredibly useful and powerful source of energy which needs to be carefully managed and maintained.
When you come home to a dark house, heavy bags of shopping in your arms, you reach for the light switch to turn on the lights. You click the switch, but nothing happens. You may give a soft curse, put down those bags, switch on the torch on your mobile phone and make your way to the consumer unit.
You are pretty sure that one of the switches will have tripped and because you know these things, you will switch it back on.
Job done, the lights will come on and you can get on with taking those heavy bags to the kitchen and put away your shopping.
Nine times out of ten, it all works exactly as you had planned, and life continues.
Then it trips again later that evening but this time, you are missing your favourite program on telly. Not only that, but now there are some questions that start to surface.
“What has made it trip again?”
“What could have caused this?”
Those questions start to worry you as you know you only have a little knowledge about how electricity ‘works’ and what could have caused this.
Fortunately, at Vector Electric we do. From flickering lightbulbs and tripping switches to discoloured plugs and electrical burning.
For us fault finding can be one of the most challenging parts of our work. Some have been ridiculously simple, such as a blown fuse but others can be far more complicated, like old wiring, overloaded circuits, intermittent faults and rodent damage, (especially in this cold weather).
These involve a lot of detective work to find and some, such as occasional faults in the devices within the consumer units themselves, can take many hours to track down.
Our team of over 25 years’ experience know everything about electricity, how circuits work and where potential problem can lie, so we know what to look out for. In most cases, after asking the right questions and some analytical thinking, we can fix the problem quickly.
One such call was to a customer whose conservatory lights had stopped working. After some careful questioning, we established that another electrician had been used to carry out an Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR).
We checked all the connections in the Consumer Unit, which were fine. However, we noticed that the conservatory did not have its own lighting circuit. This prompted us to carefully search along every wall and in every recess and we discovered a ‘fused spur’ switch behind some furniture.
Upon investigation, we found that the fuse carrier had not been pushed back in properly which meant the circuit was broken. We pushed it firmly in and ‘Ta Dah!’ The lights came on.
In other cases, isolating a fault can take hours, especially when they are intermittent.
One call was to fix a problem where the sockets kept tripping at ‘random’.
After extensive questioning and spending several hours taking apart and investigating all the kitchen and dining room sockets, checking all the appliances, then reconnecting them all the one-by one, we still were unable to find the problem. It was frustrating to leave, for both the customer and us and we asked him to call us as soon as it happened again.
The next day, it did, so we started to look for the crazy and improbable reasons for the fault. After more time spent questioning and fruitless investigating, we removed all the kitchen kickboards.
We finally found a junction box, tucked away and sitting on the floor. With no air circulation, the damp was building up and on cold days, and this was one, it was causing condensation inside the box, just enough to cause a short circuit.
We replaced the junction box with a different, sealed unit, which took fifteen minutes, and the problem was fixed for good.
Our aim is to fix your electrical problem as quickly and efficiently as possible. In most cases, we can do this as in the first example. Occasionally, when this isn’t possible, we will make the fault safe and arrange a time to return and finish the job, just like we did in the second case.
What we won’t do is string out the problem unnecessarily. We know how frustrating it is, when something you have come to depend on, stops you living your life as normal.
Also, any mess we make, we will always leave clean and tidy afterwards.
Any work we carry out is guaranteed for 10 years and that ‘peace of mind’ guarantee is unique in our industry.
So before you flick on that tripped switch a second time, hear a buzzing noise coming from your socket or notice that your lights are flickering, call us immediately on 0117 403 4023 for our expert help.
Don’t let those little, nagging questions become a major, burning worry.
