In our kitchen we have 4x double wall sockets around the kitchen walls – 3 of these have stopped working and I haven’t noticed any other electrical problems in the house.

I presume that all these sockets are on the same spur (I think thats the word for it), so don’t understand how they can be working?

The one that is working, is ‘closest’ to the fuse box.

what do we reckon?
turn the power off and take the fronts off the sockets and check the wires?
If the wires are ok, then could the wire that is buried in the wall have ‘failed’?

Check they are on the same fuse. Its not certain they will be.

Check what fuse has blown in the box or if it is a more modern house check the breaker has not tripped, Plus find the fault that made it trip (probably a dodgy appliance)

Its an old style fuse box, with plug-in modules that have fuse wire in them.

I did wonder if the microwave might have caused it as that has played-up a couple of times, but that does turn on when plugged into an extension cable

My understanding of this (as a science-teacher, not a sparkie) is that you could either have a loose wire in either of the first two power points in the circuit, or pme of the wires between these two sockets is faulty. Before you mess around with them, switch off the power to the circuit. Unscrew the power points and check to make sure the wires are screwed into the back of them soundly. Otherwise call a sparkie.

ta. Will check fuses and sockets shortly – will wait for washing machine to finish before turning power off…

Its an old style fuse box, with plug-in modules that have fuse wire in them.

This might be a good time for a new consumer unit with decent protection

This might be a good time for a new consumer unit with decent protection

🙄 that seems like an over the top solution to fixing what could be a trivial problem. Modern consumer units are not without their faults, and since the sparky will want to test all the circuits before he puts in a new consumer unit it can also be expensive (at one extreme meaning bits of the house get rewired)… …just testing all the circuits is likely to cost you half a day of a sparky’s time before he can give an accurate quote for fitting a new consumer unit.

its odd that you’ve lost 3 sockets. IIRC you shouldn’t have 3 sockets on a spur (if installed properly) – they would be on a ring, which means one dodgy wire wouldn’t show up. As its fuse wire the house is presumably reasonably old and probably didn’t have 4 double sockets in the kitchen when built which means anything is possible – as someone has added them! It is also possible that the good socket is on a different circuit (e.g. cooker circuit – or an old cooker circuit) and these three are just on a separate ring which has blown the fuse.

You can have 3 sockets on a fused spur, it depends on the the correct sizing of the cable and the number of sockets on the ring.

Sounds like a wire out/ break in the wiring on a radial circuit.

If that means nothing to you, get a Sparkie in.