Problem with oven tripping RCD

I have had a problem over several months in relation to an electric oven. Could anyone advise? Late last year my electrics became faulty and an emergency electrician came and identified a fault on a ring main in the kitchen of my house. Rather than pull up floorboards, he chose to locate the problem to between two plug sockets and then replace the wire between them by running it along the skirting board and through the wall next to the second plug socket. I don't know, therefore, what caused this initial problem. The electrician speculated that it may have been caused by mice. After replacing the cable, he found the electric oven was on its own spur and he had mistakenly cut it out of the ring he had created, so he redid some of the work and incorporated into the ring main. Since then, I have had problems with the oven that seem to be caused by overloading. Initially the oven would cut out after being used for a spell, but no electrics would trip. Within a month or two, the oven started to trip out the kitchen mcb after being on for a spell. After another few months, during which I was careful not to use the oven at too high a temperature, it began to trip the whole house however low a temperature it was used on. Why has the problem got progressively worse, do you think? Could the RCD have become too sensitive or is that not technically possible? Since the RCD trips, I don't know whether the problem is caused by over-current or an earth fault. Is there any way of knowing? What is the best thing to do from here? One electrician I asked said I should simply remove the RCD but I am worried that this might be dangerous. Should the oven be on its own ring main? At the moment it is not even hardwired into the existing ring main, but just plugs into a normal plug socket. Any suggestions?

Chris

Reply to
Chris A
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It's good to say which country -- answering for the UK.

This sounds like a failure of the cabinet cooling fan, and the oven is therefore tripping the cabinet overtemp sensor. This is assuming your oven is of a type which works this way.

The excess cabinet temperature might be damaging something else in the oven, such as some wiring insulation. The cabinet overtemp sensor is to stop the oven setting fire to surrounding materials, not so much to stop the oven from wrecking itself.

Possibly because you didn't fix the problem when it first appeared. Did you expect it to repair itself?

It's possible, but most unlikely. There's a much more likely scenario, as outlined above.

RCD's only trip with earth leakage. RCBO's have overcurrent and earth leakage trips in the same unit, and for most types, there's no indication which fault tripped the unit.

Providing it does not exceed 3kW max load, it can be plugged in (and subject to loading on the rest of the ring circuit of course). An oven does not need to be on an RCD protected circuit. However, I would not remove the RCD protection from your accessible socket outlets in a kitchen -- it's good to have them RCD protected, but not a regulatory requirement unless they could be used for powering portable appliances outdoors or your electricity supply is TT system (earthing via your own earth rod).

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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