Thanks @anon4489532!
You make a really good point here.
No he hasnt checked the electric so hasn’t detected any abnormal readings and hasn’t run a full set of tests
I’m annoyed with him that he seems - and this is my perception - to want to sort it as quickly and easily as possible without running a diagnostic check first to solve the issue not the symptom
I’m looking at other electricians now. He still hasnt come back with a price!!
£40,000 of beautiful Naim equipment I cant use, so frustrating
Thanks for everyone’s input
Tony
In your first post you asked for help/advice.
People have given advice regarding simple tests you can do yourself. Have you tried any of advice given?
Yes Dad I have!
I’ve tried the NAP250DR in the house and it doesnt trip there so atleast getting somewhere!
Working 70 hours a week makes it difficult to try these things quickly!
Thanks,
Tony
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I’m very appreciative of peoples input and attempts to help so thank you to everyone.
Regards,
Tony
And getting what you want from tradesman these days can also be tricky. The good ones are over subscribed…
Hi Tony
As you have come to realise this isn’t going to be a quick fix - your frustration is very apparent and justly so. A few thoughts, are you in regular(ish) contact with your dealer? What region of the country are you?
So, if the NAP 250 doesn’t trip elsewhere, no doubt you have / plan to remove (temporarily) the superclamps. Do you have an electric kettle or can you borrow one (pref 2kw+)? Plug it into the socket usually used for the NAP, switch on all your other Naim kit, then switch on the (water filled) kettle? What happens, with and without the superclamps?
As for the sparky’s testing - while mine is good, I don’t think he has any interest in music, so black boxes are only something “plugged” into the power! Fault finding is far from straight forward and a sparky will have encountered plenty of rogue domestic environments, so finding one with whom you can establish a rapport will, as you are experiencing, be key.
Ask everyone you know, sooner or later a recommendation will emerge who will be able to assist. I know the frustrations on the wider trades front. Do ask if you have any questions.
Hi,
My dealer for most of the kit is Nintronics. Unfortunately they are no longer a main dealer of Naim equipment so not sure conacting them will pay any dividends.
I am planning on removing the Russ Andrews Superclamps atleast temporarily, but am concerned about surges as I’ve had an amplifier although not Naim blow after a power surge in the past.
My main concern atm is finding an electrician who is willing to fault find and atleast attempt to diagnose the problem rather than educated guess work.
I am also looking to add an additional CU and separate out the circuits to fully benefit from the dedicated mains spur. My electrician atm is clearly not really looking to assist with this amd looking to do a quicker and easier job.
Regards
Tony
This shows that the problem is with the wiring / rest of the install. You need a proper sparky with the correct test kit to find the problem. Fix the problem before making any changes.
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Tony unfortunate your previous dealer is out of the loop. There are two dealers I know in your area - I am assuming you are not so far from WGC. Try either - the owner of the Naim dealer to the north is a very helpful chap at HFL. Maybe give him a call and explain you have a problem with Naim kit which you suspect is house electrics and your sparky is struggling to illuminate the problem (sorry). I know they had electric work done a while back so their sparky will have had an intro to dedicated circuits. If you require more details, please ask RD to pass on your contact details to me. Meanwhiles looks like the bright sparks have joined the thread - it’s late, time for lights out (ouch)!
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I think your electrician is better than the criticism on this thread would suggest. He will likely be aware that putting two RCDs in line tends to make them prone to tripping and his solution addresses this.
If you don’t think he’s the right guy to do a separate consumer unit instal you are right to look elsewhere, but I suspect he knows his job better than some here are trying to suggest.
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I think it’s clear the 250 is not at fault. Something else is causing the earth leakage fault within the installation within the garage. Personally as a spark I would run a full test with the garage on all circuits after the RCCB but I’m not there so I would advise to switch off all MCBs on the board that run after the main RCCB unit ( lights, sockets etc ) with the exception on the one powering the hifi. Then power up the system and see if it holds. If so then switch on each MCB one by one until it trips. Now this would possibly indicate what circuit that’s at fault because to trip a 100mA RCCB takes something biggish it’s would also indicate it’s a live to earth fault.
If the mcb trips on the hifi circuit remove all that russ Andrews kit and try again, if it still trips unplug everything on that circuit and start over one item at a time.
It’s important to remember with a earth leakage fault that just switching off a socket is not enough you have to unplug it because it could be a fault between earth and neutral. Keeping this in mind turning mcbs off won’t find the fault if this is the case but it’s all I can do without being there.
Outside sockets or lights could be the problem if water has got into them and switching them off even by the MCB won’t help as the neutral and earth are still connected so worth a walk around outside just to check everything is dry and not holding any water.
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I really good bit of advice from Dingding. I’ve had a similar problem with an outside garage circuit tripping. It was eventually tracked down to some small Stanley knife nicks in an earth and live cable likely made when stripping the sheathing. This sat quite low in an external IP65 box but when a tiny bit of moisture got in it was enough for the live to leak to the earth and trip it. It took a lot of testing circuits to eventually find it.
Ok but would that cause the electric to trip everytime that socket was switched on? Mine doesn’t seem to trip everytime.
I have now sourced an electrician who has done a survey. Going back to hungry halibuts advice earlier in the thread, I have asked for a separate CU to be installed to bypass the house CU and run directly into the garage CU, along with a clean earth rod to be installed and surge protection has been recommended by this electrician along with all C type switches and breakers in the new CU and garage CU.
I’m awaiting a quote tomorrow. Does anyone have an idea of what would be a reasonable price for this work to be carried out?
Thanks in advance.
Kind regards,
Tony
They think it will be around 6 hours work required plus obviously parts.
Kind regards,
Tony
Good tradespeople cost money. Probably £400 or £500 maybe.
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My man is around £250 a day but then you’ve got parts on top of that. Try to get him (or her) to give you a day rate rather than quote you for the job. If it’s more than one person the day rate will be grater but the overall taken time should be less?
Not wanting to over complicate things but if your house uses a TT earth system an additional earth rod is fine, as it will lower your earth fault impedance ( Ze ) to the installation. But if your incoming supply has an earth ( TNS or TNCS ) you must use that too in conjunction with the new earth rod. So if your aiming for a ‘clean earth’ your really waisting your time as the regs insist you use what’s given to you by the supplier anyway even if you supply your own earthing arrangements although it was not always the case,
My concern would still be that you have a fault somewhere, either an over sensitive RCCB , water pen or a faulty appliance which should be addressed, why has the spark not found that first ?
My guess would be around £600-800 but I’m in Kent / London prices.
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If you put a separate consumer unit near your meter I can’t see why you would still need one in the garage as well. Maybe just move the one you have instead of buying another.
I know this will be very controversial and opens big can of worms which really is not my intention but if you think about Naim’s philosophy it’s all about a single earth point source.
Now in theory a radial for each piece of kit going to a fuse board with the same length cable , same size , same resistance and same Zs readings and insulation resistance would be best, So everything equal but that’s never going to happen in reality.
But a ring circuit on the other hand keeps everything equal to the sockets on the wall and if all the sockets are next to each other the differences between them would be incredibly low almost immeasurable.
Also as all MCBs are the same internally a simple oversized 4mm ring on a 32Amp type c breaker with say just 3 double socket works perfectly and is within the regulations.
All sockets will have the same readings and resistance keeping the Naim philosophy of a single point earth because even though you can argue there are parallel paths back to the board it’s irrelevant because it’s the resistance between the sockets that needs to be the same. Which it why there’s a good argument for a simple multi-way extension lead or and hydro lead where there’s one socket on the end.
Adding an earth rod is an expensive addition and won’t filter the noise on the earth conductor or at least not enough to make a noticeable difference as we are talking mVolts.
4mm cable over 2.5mm makes a difference but I have no idea why and there’s no point in going to 6mm as you can’t get two in the back of a socket without giving it a hair cut.
Finally the biggest improvement I have made to my system even above Naim power lines was a audiolab dc filter but not on my hifi but on my TV as the power supply was having an effect on my system and I traced it to the Tv which was plugged in next to the hifi. Even on standby it was doing something but the audiolab sorted it out.
I know I have gone a tad off topic but my point is you can’t really change what you have been given so is it all really worth it.
I strongly recommend a full test and find that fault and worry about the sound of the hifi after.
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