About 2.30am last night I woke up for some unknown reason. Checked clock radio for the time but it was off. Put bedside lamp on and it wouldn’t come on. Checked main bedroom wall light - fine. All wall lights came on fine throughout.
So I figured it was the sockets and checked the fuse box and the socket switch one was off. Switched it back on and everything fine again.
I don’t leave any appliance switched on constantly at the sockets except for the fridge freezer (which I didn’t check), washer, router (was off), answerphone (was off), clock radio, bedside light and electric toothbrush (were off). (Cooker ok, but that’s on a separate fuse and was fine).
I unplug the kettle, toaster and m/wave every night, and I switch off the table lamps, TV and Freesat box at the sockets each evening.
The switch type things with the fuse at the side of it, are constantly on… ie the electric to the CH boiler, the cooker hood and the burglar alarm. I never thought to check those to see if they were off but I remember when I switched on the socket switch in the fuse box I thought I heard a noise in the boiler area as if it was coming on. I can’t be sure of that as the a/phone and clock radio were beeping.
All those switches with the fuse by the side of work fine - but I’m not sure (as I didn’t check), if they went off too.
I was asleep in bed, so not using any appliance and can’t work out what happened.
Everything’s fine now but it’s puzzling me. Any ideas please?
If the boiler is plugged into a wall socket I suspect the boiler had a sudden draw of power which exceeded that of the fuse in the fuse box and thus tripped the switch.
I don’t know what you call these things (below) with a fuse on the side, so I called those used by the alarm, cooker hood and the CH ‘switch type things with a fuse on the side’ .
The CH is connected to that similar type of switch.
No problems since, so all must be fine and dandy. I was wondering while trying to get back to sleep that night, if an insect had crawled into one of the unused sockets in the extension lead on the floor, which my t/brush is plugged into
An MCB is a type of switch in your main fusebox. They replaced the old type fuses. They are designed to switch off when there’s a fault but sometimes switch off when there’s a power surge like a lightbulb popping. (Nuisance tripping)
As clock radio, bedside lamp, router, answerphone, clock radio, bedside light, electric toothbrush, CH boiler, cooker hood (I assume this wasn’t actually left running) and burglar alarm seem to be the things affected, I’d say that most of those are low-powered things with the exception of the boiler. I’d say that it was most likely to be the boiler or the fridge-freezer (as Judd suggested) which might have tripped the circuit breaker, as they tend to keep turning themselves on and off.
I believe we once had a breaker trip and found it was the fridge-freezer which was responsible.
As it hasn’t happened since, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
If we’re both thinking of the same ‘appliance’ here, it can’t be that as they run on batteries.
(Sorry, I couldn’t resist! )
I forgot to ask Judd … would the CH, cooker hood and alarm (the ones ‘controlled’ by these switches and which I didn’t check if they’d switched off) have switched off too?
Do they come under the ‘Socket’ fuse switch in the fuse box?
Generally speaking, items such as cooker hoods, central heating controls and intruder alarms may be taken from the sockets (ring-main) via a switched fused spur. Sometimes, c/heating has its own dedicated circuit installed from the consumer unit. Under fault conditions, any of these fused spurs connected to the ring main would trip off the ring main MCB. The fused spurs would remain physically switched on. If the fused spurs had low-rated fuses 3amp say for an intruder alarm, they could blow before the MCB knocks off but MCBs are so fast acting, this is seldom the case.
I’ll smack your a*se - why you no risten?
I didn’t check the CH, cooker hood or burglar alarm to see if they’d gone off, but I thought I heard a ‘firing up’ noise from the boiler when I switched the ‘socket’ switch back on in the fuse box.
‘Appliance’ and batteries in the bedroom… surely you aren’t being norty JB :-p
PS I’m not losing sleep over it, I just don’t like it when I can’t find a reason for something
Thank you Judd… I’d copied and pasted that to read when my head’s back in gear and I can inwardly digest it, but I think I understand by a quick read that that means ‘yes’ they could have gone off.
Actually, thinking about it all, and to satisfy my curiosity, I could just switch the ‘socket’ switch off at the fuse box and check if they go off.
