The last three circuits, i.e. In the 1960’s, earth leakage protection was mandated in residential environments in the US and Canada, and subsequently in the following countries, among others: South Africa (1974), Australia (1991), UK (2002), and New Zealand (2003). this would cut the circuit off. Lets first understand what is elcb? Once you have labelled all the Neutral wires, turn off the Main Switch, ELCB and all other Circuit Breakers, and reconnect all the Neutral wires to their respective Busbars. What you have done so far may be time consuming but a valuable exercise. He fixed in the new capacitor and asked me to turn On the air-cond. For more information, see our Cookie Policy. Regards, Paul - Cape Town. Breakers are fairly cheap, when you consider that a typical home has a couple of dozen of them. Therefore the earth on the Distribution Board is usually connected to the Protective Earth (PE) from the source utility, e.g. Sadly, we don’t live in a perfect world. Thanks Mr Yong for introducing us to caps. in my case the earth leakage switch was not tripping but the air condition was not working..all I was hearing was the motor is humming because it was trying to turn but it could not. Probably a lower wattage motor. If the fault is on the Neutral side, you will need to proceed with caution. started troubleshooting for this problem since a month ago, still not found any solution. You are welcome and hope you could find the problem in the water heater. For many years, I suspected the CB10 + CB12 + Motorgate circuit was the problem. Learn how your comment data is processed. live and neutral, are either ELP, or neither are ELP. JP., Jan 20, 2009 #2. Sorry I do not have info on this. Sir. See examples of different types of circuits (loads) below: You can test your ELCB with an Earth Leakage Tester, like the one illustrated below. 9. Turns out the whole main box from the pole outside was over 20 years old and needed replaced. Just within 10 minutes he showed to me a big capacitor (30uf 400v) and told me it was open circuit. CAUTION: Do not try this yourself at home! Absolutlely shocking, no pun intended! Note 2: Be extra careful when climbing on high places to fix air-cond, antenna and etc. I made the following changes: With the Motorgate on a separate circuit (CB6), I was able to isolate the fault for the first time. So we called a professional electrician. BS EN ISO 2012 New Member. This is a beautiful article. Next, identify the ELP circuit Neutral wires by first bringing up the ELCB, and then proceeding to enerigise each of its load circuits in turn, in the same way as decribed in steps 4 to 7 above. ELCB. In which case, you could get an electric shock when you touch the outside of an appliance. pls advise,thanks. 2. The Live cables are easy to identify. I did not turn On the air-cond. If you have no idea where to start, you could always ask your local electrical supplier. It’s mainly because whenever there are sudden changes in electrical load, there can be small current flow to earth especially in old appliance. Please check only if you are aware of the dangerous voltages present on electrical wiring (If you are a Professional in house wiring)I presume you are talking about iron or corrugated building. Once the faulty circuit is isolated, the nuisance tripping will stop, and the faulty circuit can be repaired. CB4 – Stove. Circuit Breakers CB1, CB2, CB3 and CB4 and their corresponding loads Load 1, Load 2, Load 3 and Load 4, have Earth Leakage Protection. ).no problem at all during afternoon. Next, try to isolate individual circuits by means of their Circuit Breakers (CB1, CB2, CB3 and CB4 in the schematic above). There is no point in blaming the device when the problem lies elsewhere. The cable is at least 20 years old and is buried, therefore impossible to inspect. Thanks for information , sir i have one question here how to discharge this type of capacitors other than using screwdriver because once i have used screwdriver for discharging the capacitor of water pump motor and with the spark my screwdriver was damaged too badly and literally broke into two-piece. if (document.getElementById("af-header-413914580")) { The presence of an earth electrode or earth spike nearby the equipment to be protected, is the best form of protection against lightning strikes. Your meter probes must be suitably insulated for such measurements, and you must always exercise care not to touch anything that could be “live” with your bare hands when measuring mains voltages. I have not experienced any specific tripping problems with modern appliances. On the compressor of aircons there is a Hi Mr. Jestine Yong, my old Air Conditioner had a similar trouble, the compressor motoe did not started, but the ELCB did not trip anyway. And when we heard the motor was running and the ELCB did not trip he tested the air-cond for few more times to really make sure it would not trip. From your description, it would not be an easy task because it was having intermittent problem. This I was not able to tell you other than Im on electronics. The first four circuits, i.e. Thank you. It is operated and controlled without any problem. It seems to be no reading. Electricity is dangerous and should always be treated with respect. This has a double-pole switch to isolate the circuit, to be sure that this circuit was not causing the fault. How can i test to make sure. Unfortunately this did not help. capacitors should be tested after some time of appliance usage.but is there anyone who can advice when a capacitor should be tested for fault after usage? Well done good experience with AC and thanks for the info. document.getElementById('af-form-413914580').parentElement.removeAttribute('target'); For many years, since we moved into our home, the Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker (ELCB) would trip for no apparent reason. The Neutral must be physically disconnected from the Neutral Busbar. The last contractor on site had no integrity. Thanks Pete Singh. A means to insulate the exposed ends of multiple disconnected neutral wires at the same time, for example a collection of “Screwit” ceramic insulating caps. You can change your cookie choices and withdraw your consent in your settings at any time. Since it is designed to trip at 30mA, this would suggest there may be a leakage current of 20mA coming from a faulty circuit elsewhere, not necessarily from a socket outlet. Disconnect all of these load Neutral wires and temporarily insulate their exposed ends. Often, it was difficult to reset the ELCB after the trip. It means nothing problem in any individual home appliances right? It is also possible that the Neutrals of different circuits can be connected together, or cross-wired, in the wiring of the house. My AC fan motor capacitor was like that last year and it happens Friday Pm stores are closed next day Saturday closed Sunday closed, so its already Monday when I was able to buy it. There is a problem that the ELCB is tripped very frequently especially in the heavy raining day.Can someone please explain the cause of this tripping and any procedure/ step to trace out the causes of the problem? When there is a high current I'm also ref. Assuming you do not have any electrical faults in your installation, you could still experience nuisance tripping, for example, due to lightning strikes. Similarly, if water gets into a socket outlet, the ELCB … This method depends on there being an active load on each circuit when you test it. Safety first. Do you have other power supply such as generator set or invertor to feed the flats once the city power supply interrupt? 1. any idea any one? In my case, operating the microwave oven would usually trip the ELCB. Thank you for sharing. In a perfect world, the current flowing out on the Live should be returned on the Neutral, therefore the magnetism inside the core is cancelled and nothing appears on the secondary. Call a pro to determine if a ground fault is why your circuit breaker keeps tripping. He did not check the earthing. ELCB or RCCB is a protection device against earth leakage fault , while MCB is a protection device against overload and short circuit faults. The best is to get an electrician to check it. If your ELCB trips at 25mA or 30mA, and the instrument doesn’t indicate any faults, you should be smiling. How much mA is recommended for houses? This is a fault condition. It made the problem worse, as the new ELCB was more sensitive than the old one. besides electronics ckts. (function() { To make the problem more random, you may have leakage from more than one element so that the ELCB only trips when two elements are in use at particular switch settings. Perhaps you need to check with an electrician. If you are still not sure, check the references. Safety terminal or captive screws: Box type terminal design provides proper termination and avoids loose connection. i like the methodology for tracing the faulty appliance and also your honesty and truthfulness in that you called in the person specialized in the field to do that job. You must inspect visually the home electrical installion, that is the wall switches and wall sockets. after that,i unplug every electrical devices (1 or 2 devices at one time)hoping to see which one is causing the problem,but tripping still occurs. For your information there must be something that had gone wrong and drawing too much current causing the ELCB to trip. Make sure it is installed and working correctly. -->. Another problem could be active- neutral reverse polarity. Since the replacement of the cap solved the problem (the aircond now is running well after more than a week) this means the capacitor internal part could have been shorted to ground through the casing. Sir, thanks for sharing the article. CB3, CB4, etc. Note: The Live is on a Circuit Breaker. ELCB- Earth Leakage Circuit BreakerELCB testing and tripping problem . Hi, MCB at my apartment trips when there is power outage. From the Main Switch, the circuits without Earth Leakage Protection (No ELP) are connected directly to the Live Busbar (No ELP) and Neutral Busbar (No ELP).