What to do if your Fuse Box trips

Has your electric or lighting gone off in your house? This may be because your fuse box has tripped. This could be happening for a number of reasons but normally it's a quick fix! By process of elimination, you should be able to work out what’s causing the problem and reset the trip switch yourself.

If your appliances have stopped working or your lights have gone out all of a sudden, you’ve likely tripped a fuse switch. To get everything working again, you’ll need to locate the main fuse box and check to see if all of the trip switches are on.

  

What is a fuse box?

A mains fuse box, sometimes called the consumer unit, electricity board or fuse board, is designed to run and safeguard your electrics. A fuse box contains trip switches or circuit breakers. It’s normally installed in an easily accessible place so that you can locate it, even if the lights go out. This is usually near your electric metre. They are normally found in under-the-stairs cupboards, utility rooms, porches, hallways or garages.

Wherever your fuse board is, you must have easy access to it at all times, so it’s important that you keep the area surrounding your fuse box clear from clutter and do not store items in front of it.

Your fuse box will contain three types of components:

• The main switch – Turns off the entire electricity supply to your home, which is useful in an emergency.
• Fuse switches / circuit breakers – Switches that trip (turn off) to protect the appliances in your home, if there’s a fault in the circuit.
• RCDs (Residual Current Devices) – Switches that will trip and turn off the electricity if the circuit they manage is considered dangerous.

Dealing with a tripped fuse switch

If your appliances have stopped working or your lights have gone out all of a sudden either in your whole house or just on one floor, you’ve likely tripped a fuse switch. To resolve the issue, you’ll need to check the main fuse box in your home and check to see if all of the trip switches are on.

It can sometimes be confusing looking at the position of the switches on the fuse board, to see if they are on or not. The easiest way to check is to see if the majority of the switches are up or down. It’s most likely to be the up position for ‘on’ and the down position if they’ve tripped.

If any switches are down, move them back into the up position. If none of the individual electric trip switches have moved, it’s probably one of the RCD switches. Make sure they’re turned on too. Once this is done, everything should be working again.

Your tripped electric checklist:

1. Locate your fuse box and lift the cover
2. Check if all trip switches are on
3. Switch any on that have tripped
4. Check the RCD switches are on

Why has my fuse box tripped?

Sometimes your fuse box will have a label under each switch telling you which circuit they correspond to e.g. upstairs lights, boiler, kitchen sockets. This makes it much easier to identify the problem and will save you having to turn off every light and unplug every device in your home to work out what’s tripping.

As a general rule, the last appliance or light fixture you used is likely to be what caused the power to trip. Trip switches are very sensitive so as soon as there’s an issue, they’ll kick into action. This can be something as simple as a light bulb needing to be changed.

If your switches aren’t labelled or you can’t work out the problem from the appliances you were recently using, the only way to work it out is to unplug every device in your home, reset the switch and plug them back in one at a time. It’s time-consuming but should locate the problem.

Overloading circuits

If all your appliances are in good working order, they’re unlikely to trip a switch. Instead, it could be because you are overloading your circuits. This means you could be using too many electrical appliances at one time. If you’re boiling your kettle, using the toaster, listening to the radio, charging your phone, and cooking in the microwave on one circuit, you could be overloading it, resulting in your electricity not working the way it should. Your fuse box won’t like the big surge of electric, as it’s potentially dangerous. You can stop it tripping by checking you don’t have too many appliances plugged into the same socket.

Why won’t the trip switch reset?

If you have attempted to reset a fuse switch but it keeps tripping, it’s likely there’s a problem with one of your appliances or sockets. To determine the cause:

• Unplug all appliances and try resetting the fuse switch.
• Once reset, plug appliances back in one at a time and switch them back on individually.
• If the switch trips again, you’ll know it’s the last appliance that you plugged in and switched on.
• Turn off and unplug the appliance, before resetting the switch.
• Do not plug the appliance back in – contact us for help.

Why has the main fuse tripped again?

Although there’s usually a simple reason for your circuit breakers or RCDs tripping, if it’s the main switch, it can be a more complex issue. It could mean there’s a problem with the fuse box itself. If this is the case, contact us and we will arrange for a contractor. If this happens out of hours please get in touch with our Out of Hours Support