Any Electricians On Here? House Wiring Help Needed

[stephec]

I've recently had my gas boiler serviced which pulled up a fault on my upstairs mains cct.

The cct has no earth connection to it. Pulling back the socket fascias shows that all the sockets have a good earth connection to them so to check I ran an extension lead from the downstairs cct and plugged a plug in without the back on to expose the terminals. Metering between the exposed earth terminal in the extension lead and a earth wire in the back of one of the upstairs sockets showed six meg resistance.

Besides the obvious, making sure it has a good earthing at the consumer unit and breaks in the cable, does anyone have any other clues as to what may be at fault?

 

[Pete]

Hmmm.... that could be a nasty one! First thing to do is to repeat the exercise with each of your upstairs sockets: if you find some which do have a good earth that narrows down where the break might be.

There will presumably be a riser where the cables go up from the consumer unit to the first floor before spreading out around the ring main. Find the socket which is closest to that riser (probably it will be more or less vertically above the consumer unit), and take a good look at that.

If you find earth at some sockets and not at others, next step is possibly to disconnect all the sockets and buzz the wiring through until you find the break.

I presume you had the power off before you did that open-back plug test of yours! Safer is to put just an earth wire into a spare 13A plug, leaving the other end bare, and meter to that.

Still stuck? You'll need advice from a better electrician than I am...

 

[bonj2]

could be the flux capacitor.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

Assuming cct=circuit. It should be a ring main so break most likely at the consumer unit. Check in there but SWITCH IT OFF first. And there will still be live connections in there protected by a 60A fuse which won't help you if you get it wrong...........

If in doubt at all get an expert in.

 

[stephec]

could be the flux capacitor.

but won't I have to wait for lightning to strike the town hall clock before I can check that?

 

[Elmer Fudd]

There's a website called DIYnot.com here. Very helpful on all things DIY. Be warned though that you will get part 'P' mentioned a lot to you, As it's (reasonably) new legislation bought in regarding electrical work needing certification when completed.
But I hope it helps you out, used to use it a few years back when with ex doing house up, a mine of information.