Electric power tripping

PeteKnight wrote:The ring main is a very British thing, and most electricians will tell you that it’s not actually a very safe solution.
A break in one segment of the ring main, or a bad connection at the back of one of the sockets, can easily result in the sockets still working, but the rated current of the wiring being exceeded (because the load isn’t balancing across both sides of the ring). As the user won’t be aware of this problem, because all the sockets still work, this problem will be undetected but can result in a fire caused by the wiring overheating.

The ring main was supposedly invented to deal with copper shortages after the war, but that’s a bit before my time.

I’ve also seen situations where a consumer unit has been converted from a single RCD to multiple RCD, but one leg of the ring has been put into one circuit, and the other into the second circuit. This should be picked-up when the electrician does this commissioning checks, but that doesn’t always happen.

So, radial systems are actually better, but it all depends on the implementation.

Pete.