Any electricians here?

[nibbler]

Half of the lights in our house have gone out... it's a victorian tenement flat in Glasgow and pretty much the entire rear half of the house has no lights on. The mains sockets still provide power. It started last night when I turned a light on and it flashed as if the bulb had gone but in fact it had done something else... is it a fuse that's gone?

Thanks for any help you guys have

Nick

[Stephen C]

Could be a fault with the wiring, could be that you have too many lights with too high a power rating, although that's going to be pretty hard to do unless you're using 100w bulbs throughout.

Most likely the fuze has blown.

[baby_ice]

blown fuse if old mainsboard - 5a fuse wire and fix it easy.
tripped breaker if modern fuse box

[nibbler]

Yeah to my knowledge we just use normal bulbs or even the energy saving ones. Where would the fuse be?



That's what we've got - the only switch marked as 'on' is the one at the top left.

[baby_ice]

the one on the bottom right, unscrew the plastic caseing which is only a hand tightened screw. look in there it'll say 5AMP or maybe 6AMP OR 5A/6a on the fuse(S)#



EDIT- its switched off?????????? flick it back on first and see if it works

[GoNz0]

did you try to turn on the ones that are off ?

logic dictates thats the best place to start.

[Stephen C]

Aye, looks as though it's the trip switch but there's so many switches there, I can't tell which one it would be.

[nibbler]

So nothing can really go wrong from me turning those things on?

[nibbler]

Switching them from off to on did nothing. The top right switch is on too. Top right fuses are a mixture of 5, 15 and 30 amp. Bottom right at all 15. Top left are all 30.

[GoNz0]

nope, if they were unsafe a sparky would have disabled them

[Tumble]

My mum had a similar setup - what you got to do is make sure everything is switched off that uses power, turn all the switches in the picture off, then turn them on again, with the switch in the top left last. Than start turning things on again one at a time. That way you get to see a) if anything's tripping the RCD and b) if a fuse has gone.

[GoNz0]

its 5amp for lighting.

[pipTheGeek]

All those switches look like manual switches, they wouldn't turn themselves off. So you are looking for a blown fuse in one of the boxes (consumer units) that is turned on.
If the top left is all 30 amp then they are probably storage heaters. Do you have storage heaters? Sounds like the top right consumer unit is the one you want to investigate first.
Turn the appropriate main switch off, pull the first 5 amp fuse and look to see if it is blown. If it is then that is the one, if not then put that fuse back and pull the next 5 amp fuse out.
Once you find the blown fuse, re-wire it with 5 amp fuse wire put it back and turn the main switch back on. If necessary it is safe to turn the main switch on with the fuse removed so you can see to wire it, just make sure you turn the switch off before removing or replacing a fuse.

You'll probably find that the bulb that flashed has actually blown, but took out the fuse at the same time.

If the fuse blows as soon as you turn the power back on then you have a more serious fault somwhere, leave it blown and call an electrician.

[Gerrard]

Whenever a bulb blows in my lounge, it trips the CB for all the lights, so the chances are high that it's just the blown bulb that caused it and there won't be any further trouble. Of course, it's easier with CBs than fuses!

Bit surprised no-one has labelled what fuse does what. When you do find the correct fuse, might be worth labelling it yourself for future reference.

[pipTheGeek]

Whenever a bulb blows in my lounge, it trips the CB for all the lights, so the chances are high that it's just the blown bulb that caused it and there won't be any further trouble. Of course, it's easier with CBs than fuses!

Bit surprised no-one has labelled what fuse does what. When you do find the correct fuse, might be worth labelling it yourself for future reference.

I have the same problem, whenever a downstairs bulb blows it trips the MCB. Upstairs is a fuse, not had that blow yet. Lucky really, it is a cartridge fuse and I don't have any spares. I assume the bulb blowing briefly draws more current, and a fuse doesn't react quickly enough (as the bulb is very similar to a fuse but is already half way blown at this point) but an MCB does? Can anyone explain WHY a bulb blowing causes a spike in current draw?

[GoNz0]

count yourselfs lucky, I fitted a consumer unit with RCBO breakers, you sneeze and they trip

if you still have fuses you can buy breakers to replace them. ie if its a wylex consumer unit you can use http://www.screwfix.com/p/wylex-32a-...Link-_-Na-_-Na