The mains trip on my daughters van has to be held up for a few seconds before it latches. Any ideas what this means? It doesn't make sense to me. Faulty trip?
How many breakers? Main switch and 2 smaller breakers?
Remove them first and see if it trips.
If it just tripped and your resetting it then maybe its too hot and needs to cool slightly. Holding it in the on position could cause it to fuse and stick on overriding the breaker.
I believe its the main trip that goes - there are other breakers for individual circuits. The exact situation is that on arrival they connect the van up to mains & find there is no power to the mains sockets in the van. After wondering what's going on they find the main trip is down. Flicking it up doesn't make it latch - it just flicks down again. You need to hold it up a few seconds for it to stick. After that it seems fine for the rest of the stay. Doesn't make sense to me!
1... try making sure everything is off in van then try one at a time . You may be overloading the main trip for box as stuff fires up...fridge ect
2.. should not have to hold it on if ncb's are all off as there will (should) be no load on main switch.
RCD's trip due to earth leakage, MCB's trip due to current overload. I'd proceed as Richard suggests because one of the appliances may have a fault causing an earth leakage, by switching them back on one at a time you may find out which one. If this doesn't find a fault then it could just be a faulty RCD.
Quote: Originally posted by mbarry215 on 18/6/2017
I believe its the main trip that goes - there are other breakers for individual circuits. The exact situation is that on arrival they connect the van up to mains & find there is no power to the mains sockets in the van. After wondering what's going on they find the main trip is down. Flicking it up doesn't make it latch - it just flicks down again. You need to hold it up a few seconds for it to stick. After that it seems fine for the rest of the stay. Doesn't make sense to me!
We had the same issue and it was suggested that the fridge could be the cause if the fridge had not been switched off when packing up on the previous trip.
If you have been holding it up to get it to latch in I would change the RCD as they should latch in without a problem if there is no fault.
Closing an RCD frequently on a fault can cause arcing and possibly a subsequent failure.
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Topic: mains trip on Eldis
