house light fuse 8amp blowing

No one said they did not comply with the rules

I think mr fritz lives in another country and has no first hand knowledge of australian household electrical wiring

Believe it or not, I was an electrical contractor in 1964, however I know things have changed somewhat since then, but I'll give it my best shot.

You can unscrew a switch or two, to determine if it is just actives that drop down from the lights to the switches.

Someone suggested a plug in circuit breaker for the fuse holder. Great idea for chasing this fault. I have them fitted anyway. Who wants to keep changing a fuse wire in this day and age?

Now what you do is section isolate:

----------------------------------- If the active-neutral pairs run from the switchboard to each lighting position in turn, you draw yourself a map of how you would run it to save cable, if you were wiring it. This will be wrong of course, but it will be a guide to get started.

At the half way point in the cable run, unscrew the light fitting, and separate the wires. If the fault vanishes, then you have half your house wiring working, and you know the problem is in the second half. If not, split it in half again, until you do get it working. If you are getting early results, you can redraw the cable map.

If you are not confident enough to do this, then I strongly suggest you get a sparkie in. Getting the right sparkie may be the secret. :-)

Me, I got too old to wobble around on a ladder, and I couldn't see what I was doing anyway, so I would be looking for a good sparkie.

Good luck with it.

Cheers Don...

=================

I had this problem a few years ago, the lights would intermittently blow the fuse. Called a sparky in, but he was useless, he knew how to put wiring in but had no idea about fault finding. I knew that the house had been extended, and where the lighting for the new section tapped into the main part, so I split it there. That fixed the problem, so I started splitting the wires that ran from that point.

Eventually, I tracked it down to one cable which ran through the roof under some floorboards that the previous owner had put in to make it a storage area. Pulled up a floorboard and lo and behold lots of little white creatures running about, the termites had come up through the wall on the surface of the studs right into the roof without causing any damage and then eaten through the lighting cable.

The exterminator guy told me that this is not unusual, termites seem to like PVC cable. I'm glad they did otherwise they could have eaten the place out before we knew they were there.

thanks for the valuable tips n info, I will be splitting the cable run as described to isolate section shorting. But first I thought I would quickly check the closest light switches to the powerboard which is the bathroom. I have had termite problems in this area before and when I pulled out the switch I found ant saw dust caked around the wires. I cleaned it off and rewired the fuse hoping this was a lucky find but fuse blew 2 seconds later instead of instantaneously. There may be more ant gunk on other switches which I will investigate.

BTW; the first switch has ridiculous amount of stiff wiring hanging off the light switch. ie they are using the spare holes on switch as a terminal connector for 5 neutral wires and 4 actives. This doesnt look like good practice. I was thinking of buying some large screw connectors and joining all the neutrals and another for the actives and dropping them behind the switch to relieve all the strain and close proximity of the actives/neutrals, and may as well buy a new switch also.

here is a pic

this pic is after cleaning all ant sand of exposed wires.

If it ain't broke....

Sylvia.

I described section isolation in another thread.

It looks like your electrician has elected to do his loops at the switches and not at the ceiling lighting points. This may actually work out better for you, if you can't readily access the ceiling wiring.

Your problem appears to be a short between a neutral and an active. Possibly even an earth and an active.

There may well be similar wiring behind most switches, stretched and many conductors crunched into a single terminal. When the cable is new, and you are young, nimble, and confident, it is very easy to grind 4 or 5 conductors into a twisted pattern with a pair of bull nose pliers, so they will squeeze into a switch terminal and be locked up with the screw. I could virtually do it with my eyes shut, and I'm sure most good sparkies can.

So it may be quite a job to actually rewire and add new terminals to each point. You have opened up a switch with multiple actives near the switchboard.

Next step would be to get an 8A circuit breaker if you don't already have one, and use it. Drop the 4 actives out of the switch and separate them. Test it. If the breaker doesn't trip, you are getting started with section isolation.

One of the actives will be the incoming active from the switchboard, or a previous switch. Easiest way of finding it is to use a meter to check for 240VAC between your neutrals and actives. When you find it, screw just this one active back into the switch, and see if you can get your first light to work.

You then add actives until the breaker trips. Get the picture, and know where to go next?

Again if you aren't confident about this, get an Electrician. I would hope that you can safely use a meter in this fashion, if you are reading this news group.

Cheers Don...

=====================

australian household electrical wiring

Wrong I do live in another country now but lived in Australia for 44 years. I also have a copy of Australian Electrical Wiring - Theory and Practice, which I obtained while doing an Electrical Trades course as a supplement to an Electrical Engineering degree.

I would go along with that. Had a similar case where the little workers had found a cable to a switch in their way, they just kept coming at it. As one died another stepped up, it was only detected since the owner complained that the switch wouldn't turn off the light. They had stripped a couple of inches of the cables and were somewhat agro when exposed to the sunlight :-) It was a potential fire hazard, probably would have been blamed on faulty wiring by one of us useless sparkies !!

Rheilly P