Emergency Electrical Fault Repair - Russell Lea

Tripping circuit breaker

Bec's entire pool pump house was tripping because the safety switch wouldn’t stay up. Meaning her pool pump, filters, and light would not work unless she ran a power cord out from the house.

What was causing the tripping?

After we pulled the circuit apart in the pool house, we insulation resistance tested the circuit. This is basically like turning on two hose pipes and putting pressure on the hose to see if water will leak and bridge from one to the other causing a short circuit or earth leakage. When we performed this test we pushed 500 volts down the cable and we found a short circuit on the cable from the house to the pool house with a reading of 0.02 megaohms... no good!

How did we fix the electrical fault?

It was hit and hope!

There was a 25mm electrical conduit which went from the pump house to the main house, it was approximately twenty meters of a cable run - luckily it was not a straight line. Giving it a yank both sides there was a bit of giving - winning!

We carefully tied on a new cable to the end of the old one, after a bit of stress and a tight pull we got the new cable through end to end.

What was the fault?

With specialised testing equipment for fault finding especially emergency electrical fault finding like this we can pinpoint faults quickly.

After we pulled the cable out, it wasn't obvious where the fault was, in fact, it was hidden internally, by chopping down the cable, half, quarter, etc we found it. these two cores (active and earth) had shorted out.

We tested the RCD once the cable was in and reconnected. Good to go!

Job Complete - Electrical fault repaired

Bec is very satisfied with the result! Her home is now safe and protected from electric hazards.