Exciting I know..

I have an electric oven, my landlord recently put in a new consumer unit and now my oven trips the house out as it is seeing a fault with the oven. The electrician thinks it’s most likely with the element, I’ve removed the lightbulb to eliminate that and it still trips

I’m not an electrician but vaguely know my way around a multimeter so I’ve tested the element and it has continuity, and a resistivity of around 40ohms which seems about right.

Any help greatly appreciated

The electrician thinks it’s most likely with the element

Could the electrician not have tested it?

Anyway, disconnect element, turn on oven, see what happens.

Our’s caused a trip shortly before the element then packed up so as above try disconnecting once you have made everything safe 🙂

Most can be accessed from the front, I ended uo doing two in ours about a month apart and it’s been very carefully designed so you have to pull the whole thing out 🙁

I did want to try that but wasn’t keen on the live wires hanging about! I suppose it’ll be fine if I stick some electric tape on there?

I did want to try that but wasn’t keen on the live wires hanging about! I suppose it’ll be fine if I stick some electric tape on there?

the wires to the element will be crimped so just make sure they’re apart and not touching the oven casing. They generally stay in the same position when you unplug them.

new elements are incredibly cheap – like £10 – so worth replacing

Your oven or your landlords? Their oven their problem.

Does sound like the element. They often go wrong by losing electrical insulation. They are also very easy to replace.

What’s the rating of the consumer unit breaker it’s attached to?

EDIT – it’s tripping the whole house? Is everything on one breaker?

I’m not an electrician

… then you shouldn’t be farting about with someone else’s oven 🙂 Get the landlord to sort it and don’t give them the opportunity to blame you for the oven not working.

Yeah looks like an easy enough job, just that they’re 30 quid so wanted to check it was the right thing first!

The oven is mine, otherwise yes I’d have been getting the landlord to sort it.

Not sure what it’s rated to but lights and oven are on one breaker, sockets and everything else on another. What should it be rated to?

Not sure what it’s rated to but lights and oven are on one breaker,

really? IANAElectrician but that strikes me as a bit unusual

it did seem strange to me, the electrician said it’s to spread the load and so that if the lights trip out I can use anything on sockets, tv, bedside light etc to get to the consumer unit to reset.

What should it be rated to?

Higher than what its loaded with.

IANAElectrician either, but I’d expect a regular cooker to be on its own 13A circuit and a posh cooker (like these double-width affairs) to be higher. I’d also expect lighting to be separate from everything else.

Does it still do it if you turn off all the lights and everything else connected to it?

Shouldn’t really be with the lights as when it trips you are plunged into darkness*

*if it is dark outside that is.

Lights shouldn’t really be on the same RCD as anything else either. I don’t know the legislation regarding electrical safety for landlords but would be surprised if this were acceptable. Not saying it’s actually dangerous just not likely to meet regs.

Yes, tried turning everything else off and it still does it.

Very sporadic fault though, sometimes I can run the oven for 30mins, sometimes it trips every 5 mins. I’ll try disconnecting the elements one at a time tonight and see what happens

Thanks for the help guys

Any correlation between tripping and using other parts of the cooker?

Try it the other way round perhaps, turn on all the lights, hob rings, grill, then turn on the oven. Does it trip immediately (or before)? That’d point to an overloaded circuit to me.

Surely the cooker should have its own circuit!

IANAElectrician either, but I’d expect a regular cooker to be on its own 13A circuit

more like 20amps I’d have thought, at least.

Whats the actual property? – a proper house or flat or is it somewhere thats been subdivided? The wiring sounds nuts.

more like 20amps I’d have thought, at least.

Mine’s on a 13A feed. Though it’s a Victorian terrace and the wiring is… let’s just say it might not meet modern building regs.

I thought 16A was common for bigger cookers, could be wrong though.

You are getting your circuit breakers and Residual Current Devices(RCD) mixed up.
Your RCD will have been tripping, and taking out other circuits along with the cooker circuit.
It does seem to be the correct diagnosis – element insulation breaking down.When you take it out, you may see a split somewhere in the element wall.

Blimey, thanks for all the suggestions!

It’s a proper house, terraced and built somewhen in the 80’s but the previous wiring setup was quite a bodge (according to a sparky friend who saw it)

The RCD is 63A, into which there are 3 cricuit breakers: cooker, extraction and lights. Sometimes the whole RCD trips, sometimes just the circuit breaker.

Anyhow I shall unplug the elements one at a time this eve and figure out which is tripping out. Interestingly the bottom one doesn’t appear to be earthed

Inspect the elements with a good torch, they usually split, or expand, where the fault is. If no earth lead, then it’ll be earthed via bolting to the metalwork.

In case anyone was curious, it has to be the top element, when I disconnect that it doesn’t trip out.

Cheers