230V Electric Problem"

[Barney123]

My vans a Hymer 660SL 2009.

Got a mind baffling problem with my van 230v electrics.

Whilst at home and connected up to the mains, I have no problems.

Whilst away and on using site 230V Hook-Up, it trips at the bollard end, this does not happen every time I hook-up, just at some very inconvenient times.

a) It is not the electric lead as I have tried other leads when this does happen.

b) When it happens, I make sure everything 230V is switched off and it still trips.

c) Leave it for a day or so and try again and all is well until it trips again.

d) I have taken off and checked the hook-up plug into the van, all okay

e) I have taken off and checked the only 2 230V sockets in the van, all okay

f) The fridge/freezer is an AES one and it has been switched off to make sure it’s not it and it still trips.

Anyone got any clues where to search next for a remedy please.

 

[Brian Kirby]

First question, does the part of your home electrical installation to which you connect the van have an ELCB, RCD, RCBO, or similar as its mains switch, (i.e. the main switch on your consumer unit), or as separate protection for an outside supply?

 

Second question, when you connect the van at home do you leave everything working, as you would on site, or just leave the battery charger on?

 

Third question, do you know what rating the breaker at the bollards is? If abroad, I'd expect about 6A. If UK I'd expect about 13-16A.

[Charles]

Sounds like an earth leakage fault to me. You'll have to test the van with a 500v insulation tester, or get somebody to do it.

[athiest]

Hi, what ever sort of breaker you have on your main board, change it. These do fail and can give you some funny faults. Buy from from an electrical wholesalers not from camping suppliers. They are not that dear and will at least clear one possibility. Do of course unplug your mains lead while changing it. 10 minute job. "A"

[Robbo]

You seem to have checked all possibilities.

 

However, you say when at home the mains does not trip. In this situation, I assume the fridge isn't being used.

 

When away, the mains trips occasionally. You are using the fridge in this situation.

 

The common culprit would appear to be the fridge. Perhaps there is condensation building up when you use the fridge which might be causing the short circuit.

 

Even with the fridge turned off at the control panel, the incoming mains to the fridge might be suspect. The switch on the fridge control panel presumably activates a relay to trigger the 230v operation.

 

I'm clutching at straws here but it might be worth checking the incoming power feed to the fridge.

[Barney123]

To all above replies, thanks, I will check out over the weekend all your suggestions etc

Thank you

 

[aandncaravan]

I am guessing the 'House' mains supply is a spur off a 25a+ ring main?

So if the problem was one of loading, say drawing 17A, then the house is unlikely to trip until a much higher load than the 16a of a site Bollard is reached?

 

If the House '16a' circuit is wired correctly, an Earth fault would trip the house RCD as well as taking out a site Bollard, so unlikely to be that or the cable.

Also if the Internal RCD was faulty and tripping 'early' it would be that tripping first, not the Bollard. So I think we can assume the vehicle RCD, MCB, etc is also sound but check it for burning/poor connections and that the Pins in the 16A socket on the side of the van are not burnt/rough?

 

If the load is, as Brian intimates, the same at both the House and on site, which it obviously needs to be to make an accurate comparison, then the House is unlikely to trip until 25+ amps. This suggests that, for whatever reason, the load on site is getting too close to 16amps?

 

We have just worked on a vehicle that had a mains charger that drew 5 amps at 230v, if you add that to a 'big' Kettle it may trip out the Bollard. As Brian notes above the charger is often forgotten in the calculations.

Add on a Fridge, Water Heater, Laptop charger, 240v Tele and satellite box, etc. and you can easily exceed 16a.

 

 

Because the Motorhome performs ok on the House circuit, it rules out pretty much everything (again assuming we are comparing equals) except the amps being used?

It is possible that one appliance is using more than it's fair share of power due to a fault?

 

Because it works ok some of the time and not others, also suggests a load related issue which would create a random picture? Again assuming this has happened on multiple Site Bollards to rule out a failure there?

 

Suggest you add up all the 230v 'users' active the next time it trips, and see how close you are getting to 16amps?

 

 

When you write, "When it happens, I make sure everything 230V is switched off and it still trips".

How do you power everything off and then reset? Do you power off all the devices, then the MCB's followed by RCD? And do you 'Power back up' by trying just the RCD (with MCB's down) and then put back on the MCB's one by one?

If so is there a particular MCB causes the trip? The vehicle may have physically linked fuses so this may not be possible to do?

 

 

If the House 230v mains connection is a 16a to 13a adapter pushed into a 13a socket then the loading can't be the same as the 13a fuse in the plug would fail?

 

 

 

 

 

[Charles]

"Everything 230v is switched off and it still trips"

 

There must be an earth fault on your van tripping the EHU post RCD.

You need to fault find using an insulation tester.

I bet your house hasn't got an RCD.

[Barney123]

Hi all responders above, many thanks for your suggestions.

Where possible (to me) checking I still have not got to the bottom of it, I now think its an Earth Fault in the van. I have now got to wait till the weekend, where I have someone lined up to do an Earth Check for me. Hopefully this will help sort it out.

Will keep you all advised.

Thanks

 

[Barney123]

Just an update on my saga.

I had a guy lined up over the weekend to test my electrics.

Well all he did was what I had already done and that was to plug in a "Polarity Tester" into each socket and declare "Nothing wrong with electrics and it must be the site bollards which are at fault".

Plus as the fault of tripping the electrics did not happen whilst he was available, it was a shrug of the shoulders and wait till it happens again.

I will keep you updated as things happen and hopefully report of "Fault cleared" next time

Thanks

[Brian Kirby]

Bill, you would help us to help you if you could answer some of the several questions we have variously asked above, with particular emphasis on whether your house electrics (more accurately the circuit you plug your van into) are RCD, ELCB, or RCBO protected.

 

The site bollards are giving you a message that something is wrong, and it sounds as though that something is an earth leakage. That can indicate a dangerous situation. The answers to our questions would help to eliminate that possibility.

 

Trying to fault find at a distance isn't easy, and we do need those answers to those questions to try to narrow down the possibilities.

[Barney123]

Hi Brian,

I do apologise for not answering to all the suggested possible problems.

At the moment I have eliminated all suggested problems, except I think the fault lays with the vehicle RCD.

With the mains unplugged from the vehicle and If I put the meter across the positive and negative pins on the inbound supply side of the RCD the needle goes right across the scale on the meter. Does that not suggest the RCD is at fault ?. Or am I wrong ?

 

 

 

 

 

[Brian Kirby]

Don't apologise, no need! :-) Interesting. It may, but what is your meter measuring? Have you switched off all MCB's on your van's distribution board? Without knowing what you're measuring, I don't understand what the needle swinging across the scale means.

 

Does your house system have some kind of earth leakage trip as its main switch? I think that is the most important thing to establish.

[Geoff Cole]

Hi Barney,

It sounds as if you may have an intermittent earth problem the first thing to do is check that the earth wire on the vehicle hook up socket is properly earthed to the vehicle chassis and is not dirty or corroded this could cause the problem you are having. also check that all the connections on your RCD and MCBs are tight.

You need to put a megger or similar earth continuity testing equipment between the earth pin and live and neutral pins separately to see if you have and earth fault.

 

If the readings are low then the most likely cause would be the mains element on your water heater, space heater or fridge element. if reading are ok then it might be that you have an earth leakage occurring when the fridge or water heater elements heat up.

Do a test with everything switched off (don't forget the water heater) if all ok then test with water heater on leave to heat up then retest if all ok switch heater off and put fridge on allow to work for at least half an hour then retest if all ok and the readings are clear then and no fault found then other avenues will have to be explored,

I am afraid that its a process of elimination with these sorts of problems, and it can be very time consuming to get to the bottom of the problem.

The fact that you have a reading between between the live and neutral on the in coming side of the RCD suggests that you still have something switched on.

Geoff C

[Barney123]

Thanks Geoff and Brian for the PM.

I have now decided to put my tools away and await an Electrician to come either tomorrow or weekend.

So whatever the outcome is, I will post the results.

Thanks again to all

 

[Barney123]

Hi to all who are waiting to hear the next instalment.

I have had 2 independent Part P electricians have a look at the 230v electrics in my van and neither have found a fault. They both claim it got to be the bollard on the site that is at fault, and not a fault in the van. Both my leads have been tested, they are both okay.

Because the fault only happens on a site and not at home all indicates the fault to be on the bollard.

We have made sure the RCD in the house is working okay, put everything that is 230v in the van on, one at a time and also everything 230v on together and still no trip.

I think the only way I am going to get to the bottom of this is to go and book into a site, sit around for a few days until it trips the bollard and then scream out for an Electrician to come and investigate from there.

It has happened on 3 sites this year only, never before. 1 site France, 1 in Germany and the most recent was in UK, Weymouth.

So that's the story so far.

 

 

[QFour]

We manage to trip the switch on the site if we have the heating / water set to high. If everything switches on together heating, fridge and kettle then it pops the switch. When on sites I set the heating to 2kw.

 

I do sympathize with you Barney123. Electrical gremlins are the worst. Just found out why our central locking on the habitation door was so intermittent, When it was built someone did not push all the pins in the 15 way plug properly. This left one of the pins just touching rather than making a good contact. This has been going on for months as most of the time it worked :-S

 

I did think I had found it a couple of weeks back when I noticed one of the door contacts not protruding as much as the other. Broken spring and lots of rust. So two faults on the same circuit.

[Brian Kirby]

Barney123 - 2016-11-19 5:06 PM

 

Hi to all who are waiting to hear the next instalment.

I have had 2 independent Part P electricians have a look at the 230v electrics in my van and neither have found a fault. They both claim it got to be the bollard on the site that is at fault, and not a fault in the van. Both my leads have been tested, they are both okay.

Because the fault only happens on a site and not at home all indicates the fault to be on the bollard.

We have made sure the RCD in the house is working okay, put everything that is 230v in the van on, one at a time and also everything 230v on together and still no trip.

I think the only way I am going to get to the bottom of this is to go and book into a site, sit around for a few days until it trips the bollard and then scream out for an Electrician to come and investigate from there.

It has happened on 3 sites this year only, never before. 1 site France, 1 in Germany and the most recent was in UK, Weymouth.

So that's the story so far.

Hello Bill. From your first post the fault is intermittent. I'm assuming a 2009 Hymer will have an RCD type main switch on its consumer unit. I'm intrigued that you haven't mentioned this tripping when the fault materialises, only the site end. I have only, to my recollection, tripped a site pillar on one occasion out of what must by now be several hundred sites visited in some 14 different European countries. That was in Portugal, and the pillar had only a 3A supply - which I hadn't noticed. So, the trip was simply due to overload and not an earth fault. All I'm saying is that this is not a common occurrence.

 

But, you have experienced this on three occasions, at three different sites, in three different countries. On that basis, I think we can safely discount the defective site pillar theory. However, the fact that your van unit hasn't tripped suggests that the fault is not on the "van" side of your mains trip, so your "internal" wiring seems also in the clear.

 

The fault must, it seems to me, lie between the site pillar and your mains trip. I do not know whether a defective trip on your van could trip the site supply without at the same time tripping itself but, bearing in mind that the type of trip likely to have been fitted to your van trips if the current flowing in does not match the current flowing out, it seems unlikely to be the source of an earth fault. Unless the site pillars are very old, the same type of trip is likely to have been fitted to these, indicating that what is flowing to your van does not match what is flowing back from it. The assumed logic is that such an imbalance can only arise if current is flowing to earth. So, somewhere between your van's main switch and the your mains lead plug, there seems to me to be an intermittent earth fault. Since you have tried different connecting leads without resolving the problem, it seems we can also discount the leads as potential culprits.

 

It seems to me we are left with the plug on the side of the van, or the wiring between that and the mains switch. Depending on where these are installed, there may be scope for the interconnecting wiring to be disturbed/damaged while travelling, or for a loose wire in either the connecting plug or the mains unit itself to cause the problem.

 

So, might vibration or disturbance from items in the vicinity of either the plug, the mains unit, or the connecting wiring, while travelling be the cause? If any of that wiring is within a storage area, I think I would first look for signs of mechanical damage. Just musing, mind! :-D

[Keithl]

Barney,

 

I think we are all assuming you are tripping the Earth leakage side of the post but please can you confirm if it is the earth leakage RCD or over current MCB which is tripping on the posts you have tripped?

 

If it is the over current MCB do you then know the current rating of those you have tripped?

 

My suggestion would be next time you trip a bollard (if indeed it ever happens again) please could you photograph the innards of the bollard as tripped and then highlight (point maybe?) at what you reset. This will tell us if it is earth leakage or over current.

 

Thanks and hope you get it sorted.

Keith.

[Barney123]

Hi Brian,

I do apologise again, in my ignorance, I assumed the the switch on mains board in the van was an RCD, it is not and is a On/Off switch and under that switch is distribution panel which houses the live/neutral/earth pins for the various cables off to sockets/fridge/under floor heating/charger etc.

I have also got to say, the Hymer is a Grey Import and I understand from a UK Hymer dealer that the type of Mains Board is not used in UK and they would change it to a UK Spec one. So this sounds to me that Grey Imports have EU Spec boards and Hymers bought from UK Dealers will have been converted to UK Spec before leaving the factory. I may be totally wrong, and I am only going by what I was told.

 

[Brian Kirby]

That is a bit surprising on a 2009 van. Our 2007 Hobby had an RCD main switch, and I'm pretty sure the Burstner we had before it had as well. Both were LHD personal imports, one from France and one from Germany, and our current 2013 Hymer (another LHD import from Germany) has an RCBO, which is basically a combined MCB and RCD that trips in the event of either overload or earth leakage. As yours is a grey import, can you be confident of its age? Is it on an '09 UK plate (when it was imported?), but first registered in (presumably) Germany earlier? What you describe sounds like an electrical installation of an earlier generation than 2009.

 

However, whatever its age, from what you say it would not respond to earth leakage, so getting the switch changed for an RCD type might be a good idea, if only because it would then help identify whether the fault is arising within the van's internal system or elsewhere.

 

But before doing that, I'd still be inclined to pay close attention to the connections in the mains connection plug, in the main switch, and in the distribution board below it, to check for any loose connections or wandering wires (disconnect from mains first! :-)). I'd also have a detailed look at the wire between the plug and the mains switch to see if there is any sign of damage.

 

Keith has a good point. Could it be overload that caused the trips, and not an earth fault? Electric kettles and hair dryers are the popular culprits. A 6A supply (common in Europe) will only sustain a load of about 1,400 Watts, which is easy to exceed when other items such as fridge, battery charger, etc are added in.

[Barney123]

Hi Brian,

When I say Grey Import, its Personal Import, brand new in 2009, ordered at Dusseldorf Show via Campirama. My previous Hymer also new via Campirama had the exact same Main Board in it.

As I said in my last post I am only quoting what I was told when I called into a Hymer Dealer a couple of weeks back and asked them to have a look at it.

The Service Mgr and another member of his team had a quick look, when they seen the Main Switch in the wardrobe, they said if it came into them they would not pass it and it would require the UK SPEC MAIN BOARD quoting 3 to 4 hours labour at £90.00 per hour plus parts etc to change and test etc. They also said they would change my 2 pin sockets to 3 pin UK sockets even through my appliances have 2 pin plugs with earths on them. With that bombshell I declared I would think about it and search for further guidance.

Re putting an RCD, I did say to the Electricians about it and they declared WHY, you have an RCD on the Bollard and a RCD in the Hook-up at home. I do get your point about putting one in the van.

I know the electricians went through all cables etc with their testers etc and found no fault , plus as I said earlier we did fire up all electrical appliances, ie kettles, hair dryers (both low wattage), switched fridge to mains. underfloor heating, charger on all at once when on home hook-up and no fault.

This fault could go on for days/weeks/months without happening then out of the blue it goes,

As I wont be on site bollards for a couple more months I am going to call it a day for now, and hopefully it was only a bad blip gone past.

Thanks

 

 

 

[aandncaravan]

I can't believe that you put on all those appliances on at the same time and didn't exceed 16Amps??

 

I don't think you are testing in a like for like environment? I suspect the '16A' point at the house is off a much higher rated circuit, probably 25amps at least?

 

But at least the testing shows there isn't an Earth fault?

 

Sorry but for the Hymer dealer to say he would replace the 2 pin Schuko sockets which are known to have a very high safety record is bizarre? I don't understand their logic in wanting to replace them?

I wouldn't be surprised if they also didn't know what a Continental 230v mains breaker looks like either?

 

Suggest you go to someone who specialises in imported Hymers and get them to check it, because we agree with Brian, if it isn't the protection you need then it should be addressed?

 

[Brian Kirby]

Barney123 - 2016-11-20 8:05 PM

 

Hi Brian,

When I say Grey Import, its Personal Import, brand new in 2009, ordered at Dusseldorf Show via Campirama. My previous Hymer also new via Campirama had the exact same Main Board in it.

As I said in my last post I am only quoting what I was told when I called into a Hymer Dealer a couple of weeks back and asked them to have a look at it.

The Service Mgr and another member of his team had a quick look, when they seen the Main Switch in the wardrobe, they said if it came into them they would not pass it and it would require the UK SPEC MAIN BOARD quoting 3 to 4 hours labour at £90.00 per hour plus parts etc to change and test etc. They also said they would change my 2 pin sockets to 3 pin UK sockets even through my appliances have 2 pin plugs with earths on them. With that bombshell I declared I would think about it and search for further guidance.

Re putting an RCD, I did say to the Electricians about it and they declared WHY, you have an RCD on the Bollard and a RCD in the Hook-up at home. I do get your point about putting one in the van.

I know the electricians went through all cables etc with their testers etc and found no fault , plus as I said earlier we did fire up all electrical appliances, ie kettles, hair dryers (both low wattage), switched fridge to mains. underfloor heating, charger on all at once when on home hook-up and no fault.

This fault could go on for days/weeks/months without happening then out of the blue it goes,

As I wont be on site bollards for a couple more months I am going to call it a day for now, and hopefully it was only a bad blip gone past.

Thanks

Then, I'm afraid your service manager and his electrician are in all probability mistaken about what is installed. The manual for mine definitely shows it to have what they describe as a "safety cut-out device". That is an RCD. It has a yellow test button above the switch itself which, when connected to mains and pressed, will trip the main switch. It would be worth double checking this. If unsure and the switch is easy to access, just post up a photo.

 

I think Andy may also be a bit mistaken over the capacity of what you are connecting to. I suspect you may well have a UK plug on an adapter cable when you connect at home, which would limit your supply to 13A via the plug fuse, so about 3Kw load max. before the plug fuses. A 16A CEE socket may have been installed, but would be unusual on a house, and if on a spur may well be fused below 16A. Even so, it is likely to be higher that you'll find on a continental camp site. When abroad, however, the pillar power supply is frequently much lower: as I said above, frequently 6A, but some lower. So, as some of the on-board 230V load is automatically switched (fridge, charger, etc), it is quite possible that even a "low wattage" (but what is the wattage?) kettle etc. may run you close to the limit and, should the fridge and battery charger also switch in, it would be quite possible to overload a low Amperage trip.

[Billggski]

I may be confused about this, (I usually am)

But when you say "it trips at the bollard end" do you mean the switch on the bollard trips and you have to reset it?

This happens regularly when the campsite hook ups are a low amperage, I have seen sites with 4amps quite often.

Nothing wrong with the Moho electrics, just not enough power going in.