Hi
New here Not sure if it’s been asked, for the last few days, after.loadshedding, my main breaker(where council feed comes in) keeps tripping. We have no extra load/nothing different from ehat is usual plugged in/working. Pls advise what the issue could be? Thank you
Morning and welcome.
Is this also you?
https://www.4x4community.co.za/forum/showthread.php/368294-Main-Breaker-issue?p=5111658#post5111658
I’m not offerring any fancy explanations, but ours did the same when it got old. After it was replaced, it didn’t do it again.
Thank you! Do I get a private electrician, or does the council have to do it?
The supply in your street? - Council
In your db? - You
The one in your db has a limited lifetime. Mine doesn’t trip, but when I switch it off, I have to reset it very carefully else it trips internally.
So it’s not in the street, it’s on property but outside against wall, so not in the house
If its on your property and only serves your house, it would be for your account.
Thank you
I think you need to tell us more 
) Equipment installed if any, etc
No equipment/inverters backups etc
Our breaker where main feed comes in from council, is in our yard not on pavement/outside wall. This is the breaker that trips after loadshedding, not everytime, but has happened often in the past 2 weeks.
My guess would be inrush current. A breaker is supposed to be able to handle 5 times its rated current without instantaneously tripping. Assuming the typical single phase house, that’s a 60A breaker, so it should be able to handle an inrush of 300A. I cannot imagine anything on the premises could have that kind of inrush.
Anyway, I would replace the breaker first. That’s cheap compared to what comes next (searching for the culprit, trial and error, praying FOR load-shedding as our friend TTT was doing because the fault only happens if he gets it at 8AM in the morning ).
Probably get a sparky to do this. Cause you either need to switch off the other end, or you need to know how to work with live cables. In other words, kids, don’t do this at (your) home!
Thank you
Yeah, I replaced the EL on the Non-Critical DB … was the cheapest …
But before you do that, as this was my 2nd run-in with issues, have your sparkie test your EL BEFORE spending anything more. Do that test and see how it measures. Takes a few minutes. Non-intrusive too.
See, my first bout with this ended up with discovering that the original electrician never got the earthing properly connected. So we had to get a TNC-S earth peg slammed in as the problem was the box in the street, read, our house was never earthed properly since it was built originally. Yeah, so much for a CoC when you buy a house.
Test the earth first … then take it from there.
Uuuh… I think you are confusing the issue. The breaker in the kiosk is tripping, where the house connects to the grid. That does overcurrent only, no earth protection here. This time it is not related to a tripping earth leakage
Yes, I got that … something upstream is tripping it … so test the house.
But that something is only there for a split second when the power comes back on. After that it stays up… right?
That something is either normal, or abnormal.
Inrush current is normal. The breaker should be able to handle it. So replace the breaker first. It’s cheap compared to what comes next
Yes I had breakers too that did funny things and when it was replaced all the weird behaviour went away. So that would be my first try too.
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