Broken Trip Switch

1) My trip switch is broken, help me!

1.0.1) Is it really broken? That is the first question you need to ask. 

There are a number of reasons that a trip switch will not reset. These things are notoriously sensitive and can trip in the event of even the most minor issue. They are fantastic at protecting cables and saving lives so despite how annoying it may be to have one that is tripping, they are performing a vital job. 

If your trip switch is truly broken then it will not reset even if ALL THE POWER is turned off. 

You may not have a “BROKEN TRIP SWITCH” and it may be an issue like the following:

• Water ingress into electrical things like socket, switches, garden lights 
• Faulty appliances
• Rodents chewing cables or cable damage somewhere in your property
• Short circuits in the wiring
• Aged cabling with poor quality insulation

2) How do I find out what it is?

There is some investigation work that you can do yourself, safely and without risk. We have produced a help sheet for you, our customers, to enable you to try and reset the power yourselves. This is done for your benefit and costs you nothing, not even an email address. 😊 If you go to the part of our website where the help sheet is then it may help you out.

https://www.electricalfaultsfixed.co.uk/helpsheet/help-my-house-electrics-are-tripping

We have written many help sheets and blogs that may be useful to you and help you get by without the need to call on us for our services. We are nice like that. If you do need us though, then just fill in the contact form and we will do our best to help. 

https://www.electricalfaultsfixed.co.uk/contact

3) What causes a trip switch to break?

I’m glad that you asked. I really enjoy explaining. It might get a bit nerdy but try and bear with it if you can. 😊 

A trip switch controls the flow of electrical current around our electrical circuits in the home. An electrical circuit is comprised of cable and electrical accessories like plug sockets for example. 

There should be a safe level of electrical current flowing around the circuit under normal use and the trip switches are happy with this. They allow it to carry on. When there is a problem though that is when these trip switches spring into action. If damage occurs to a cable for example, then there can be a “short circuit” which causes a very large electrical current to occur. The circuit breaker detects this and immediately shuts off the power to the circuit or group of circuits. 

4) I kept resetting the switch and now it won’t!

When a circuit breaker or other trip switch device turns the circuit off it “breaks” the circuit and gets rid of a massive electrical current at the same time. When this happens there is a great deal of stress placed upon the trip switch as it dissipates this electrical force. These trip switches are only designed to do this a number of times and will eventually fail if repeatedly forced to cope with the stress of this. The idea is that there is a fault and it should be investigated by an electrician NOT be repeatedly ignored. 

Think about your car. Slamming on the brakes to do an emergency stop every single time you come to a standstill will take a massive toll on your braking system. Putting excessive pressure on the brake lines, brake cylinder, seals, pads and discs. Eventually the braking system will fail, something will give! 

If you have reset the switch too many times then it will likely have to be replaced. This may be easier than it sounds. Many consumer units / fuse boxes are aging and out of date and a replacement may not be easy to come by. In the case that this happens then the fuse box will need to be replaced. We can see very quickly that calling an electrician to investigate in the first place may have been the best option. ☹

5) What can you do to help?

If you find that the help sheet has not helped you then you will need a local emergency electrician to attend for you. If you are in the north west then it is likely that we can help. If not, then a Google search will help you to locate your nearest emergency electrician. 

Sometimes there are spare circuit breakers that are unused in your consumer unit / fuse board and we can use these if they are suitable to replace a broken one. 😊 

If not then we do actually carry spare consumer units on board in case we need to replace one in an emergency. This does not happen often thank goodness, but when it does, we are prepared. 

If you suspect that you have a “BROKEN TRIP SWITCH” then it will need to be replaced. Firstly, the cause of the tripping will need to be investigated. It is no good replacing a trip switch for the fault to still be present and causing problems again, breaking another trip switch and so on. 

If the issues are related to damaged wiring, rodent damage, aging cabling or water ingress then we can help. We cannot repair faulty appliances although we can tell you if we suspect an appliance is faulty and recommend an appliance engineer to help. If you still need some assistance, contact Your, Local, Reliable Electrician in Liverpool. Likewise just search "Electrician Near Me" and we should be in the top 3!