Earth leakage trip 7 min past the hour every hour

[AndyD]

What has altered recently? Any electrical additions or new appliances or even Christmas lights?

Do you have access to a Mega tester and an RCD ramp tester? If not it's going to be difficult to find the fault(s) unless it's something obvious. The problem is that global earth leakage is a cumulative fault so you might be looking for several smaller leakage faults and it may be that none of them on their own are large enough to cause the RCD (earth leakage breaker) to trip.

*Edit*
0111100001110 is actually a binary message and translates as 'you'll never find me without a Mega tester'.

[ians]

Do you have any surge protection plugs?

[IMHO]

*Edit*
0111100001110 is actually a binary message and translates as 'you'll never find me without a Mega tester'.

hehe, good one!

No, I have the normal hosehold multi-meters, AMP meter, ELCB polarity tester.

Our electritian should be back from holiday tomorrow. He should be able to borrough me what I need. How does Mega and RCD ramp tester work?

Might have surge protection scattered around. Why?

[IMHO]

01111001011011110111010100100111011011000110110000 10000001101110011001010111011001100101011100100010 00000110011001101001011011100110010000100000011011 01011001010010000001110111011010010111010001101000 01101111011101010111010000100000011000010010000001 00110101100101011001110110000100100000011101000110 010101110011011101000110010101110010

AndyD there is your binary quote!

[IMHO]

[ians]

If you have had lightning or power surges recently, the caps could be faulty, you reset and there is no problem, but it will normally just trip randomly, not ever hour, but you never know, i have seen stranger thing happen.

[Leecatt]

Earth leakage trip 7 min past the hour every hour. How do I locate the problem? This started after I replaced the old Earth leakage. Driving me mad. The problem is on one of about 7 circuit breakers or combination of them. This tends to happen only at night, but does happen here and there during day hours.

Ok here's my 5 cents worth:
1. You have something in your circuit that is on a timer and it comes on every hour at 7 minutes past the hour for an unspecified time. Pool motor perhaps? Jaccuzzi heater?
2. This item does not produce enough "earth leakage" to trip the ELCB
3. During the night you have lights that come on, and they produce enough additional "earth leakage", which when combined with the above fault cause the ELCB to trip every time the above fault occurs.
4. During the day the lights are off but there may be additional "earth leakage" faults caused intermittently, and briefly, by other contributors such as the stove, geyser, appliances etc.

Or your neighbour is having a lot of fun at your expense...

[bergie]

the hourly tripping is weird. maybe the house is haunted.
but seriously i wouldnt look for the fault yet . install a 2nd earth leakage relay. split the circuits over both. then see what happens. in future it will also help with other fault finding. i have done this so many times and sometimes the fault doesnt come back. it could just be accumalative earth faults.

[IMHO]

bergie, I will ask my electrician to do that tomorrow. A second elcb sounds like the answer, if it will split the accumulative fault. But can it be done? All the earth wires is on one common bar, is it not?

In the meantime I have now unplugged all the laundry equipment. Still trip. Then I switched the pool pump off with its own isolator at the pump. Still trip. Now I have unplugged all fridges and freezers. Waiting for the next trip.....

[IMHO]

BTW Andy, our sparkie does not want to use the meggar. He is scared he may blow up something of mine. He is advising me to play the eliminating game, till we find the culprit.