It is natural to be cautious when a problem occurs when you suspect an electrical fault, it is something most people know little about.
That is why it is important to call a professional to help you ascertain the fault.
QMS Electrical Director Jason Brooks said the most common reason people call him is they do not know why they have lost power.
Here he gives you some tips to help navigate your way around a loss of power problem.
“The first thing to establish is whether it is the whole street, whether it is a network issue or is it localised and only affecting your property,” Jason said.
The easiest way to do that is to have a look around the street; does the business or house next door still have its lights on.
Once you have established a visual the next step would be to see if it has affected the lights and the power or just the lights or the power.
Jason said normally with loss of power it is either a faulty RCD (Residual-Current Device) or the RCD gets overloaded.
“So, they might have the kettle, the toaster and the microwave all on at once, on one circuit and they all come on together, and it just momentarily trips the RCD.”
The RCD is an accumulative thing it measures the amount of currenting travelling to earth. If you have three different appliances that are heavy on power usage their combined total could be enough to send the RCD over the limit and cause it to trip. Or you might have recently plugged something in that is faulty.
“We talk them through where possibly with things like that,” Jason said.
“We try and avoid coming straight out, 90% of the time we can talk people through the problem and identify it over the phone.”
Jason said overloading is something that cannot easily be avoided.
“The kitchen is normally one circuit, so you have to avoid putting all your appliances on at one time.
“If you can’t avoid this you can call us to come and separate the circuit so you can have the kettle or the microwave on a different circuit.”
An aged care facility that QMS Electrical service has two kitchenettes joined and it apparently trips all the time.
Jason and his team have been called out to separate the two kitchenettes.
“For our commercial clients we are on call 24/7. We generally only have these about two a month but then on a rainy weekend we might get three or four in the same weekend.”
Outdoor fittings get wet with water running into a power point or a light, tiles leaking into lights and under the eaves, accumulating water or a faulty/tripped RCD can be a common call out in wet weather.
You can help prevent it from happening by not leaving leads lying around outside, or if not using a lead, unplug it. Same with appliances outside, unplug the appliance. If the power has tripped did you just plug something in?
“Remember electricity is dangerous so don’t try and do it yourself, call the experts in,” Jason said.