Hi,

I’ve just bought a new house, which came with a 2 week old electrical safety and test certificate. Needless to say, we’ve now found electrical problems.

Everything works fine, except for the sockets. As soon as you plug anything in to any socket it trips the RCD.

My suspicion was a loose wire at the back of one of the sockets after the testing had been done, but I’ve checked everyone and they’re all connected and are actually a very tidy job.

Is there anything else that could be super obvious and very simple for me to check?

Thanks,
Andy

Have you got a socket tester? That will let you rule it some of the basics, or is that he you tested them?

Our problems were traced to a fry integrated dishwasher in the end. New dishwasher no rcd tripping.

Anything hard wired into the ring? Cooker?

Haven’t got one, but could pick one up easy enough.

Are you thinking there may be a faulty socket, or would this just help narrow the problem down?

RCD implies a phase to earth somewhere. I bet a megga on phase to earth would fail.

They are cheap and should tell you if something isnt wired correctly without taking the face plate off

Get on to the estate agent (or whoever provided the certificate). Not your problem to diagnose IMHO.

Get on to the estate agent (or whoever provided the certificate). Not your problem to diagnose IMHO.

I’d unplug absolutely everything that you’ve brought to the house first (fridge, washing machine etc) and confirm the issue persists first – maybe save yourself a bit of egg on your face 🙂

We’ve brought nothing in ourselves and it’s still empty.

Doubt we have come back though as the ownness would be on us to have done the testing ourselves. I think that’s how these things work.

I am getting the sparky that did the testing back to investigate unless there’s something blatantly obvious I can correct myself quicker.

May be a dodgy RCB, or a faulty item plugged in , unplug everyting as above then re plug one by one, a long job j but crap on tv.

Then email your estate agent and house builder, so you have proof youve raised the matter and ask for a full retest, phone calls are forgotten.

Doubt we have come back though as the ownness would be on us to have done the testing ourselves.

I’m not sure if safety certificates care who paid for them. If a component such as an RCD has failed then you probably not get any come-back on that – but if theres an error or omission in the wiring and installation, but its been certified as correct and complete, then thats at least embarrassing for whoever passed it.

Then email your estate agent and house builder, so you have proof youve raised the matter and ask for a full retest, phone calls are forgotten.

Emails are easily ignored.

Can you confirm is it a RCD, or the circuit breaker that has tripped? Or, is it a combined RCD and CB – a RCBO?
It is unlikely to be a loose connection. Does it trip when you plug anything into the sockets?
If so, someone has got their neutral wires mixed up, probably at the Consumer Unit.
Or, a more distant chance, they have got a neutral from one circuit feeding another circuit.
Check your lights, up and down to see of it trips then. If it does, then it’ll be a lighting fault, if it is only the sockets that trip , then it is most likely a fault on that circuit only, albeit with a small chance of it being a ‘shared neautral’.

No electrician but had similar problem also and it was live/neutral mix up IIRC?

Electrician may have put the neutrals in on the wrong rcd side, assuming it’s a split load board.
Without proper testing, it’s hard to diagnose or give proper advice.
Getting the sparky back would be the first thing i would do…

I had a Cert done on my much older house. The sparkie left a hand-written form, then the true Cert came from NIC EIC. If I had your problem I’d be staight onto them, whoever they are.

When you say new house, do you mean new to you or just been built?

Thanks for the tips guys.

It’s definitely the sockets that are the issue. Lots of time yesterday spent eliminating things by isolating everything else.

Taking a testing tool up to the house tonight to try further.

@thomasthetankengine – new to us in this case. I’ve bought a new build in the last 2 years and the electrics were about the only thing that worked in that place.

My money is on a single neutral wire from a ring being in the bus bar on the wrong side of the split consumer board. Seems to be a common issue that catches even the professionals out.