What to do if Your Circuit Breakers Keep Tripping

Electricity is a tricky complex beast to understand and all kinds of things can go wrong with it. We know because we get called out all the time for a variety of electrical jobs where things have gone wrong with either the fuse-box, or possibly appliances themselves. There are common situations that can be dealt with at home, but only if you know what you’re doing, and we highly recommend you call a qualified and registered electrician to come and fix the problem for you if you’re unsure. 

One of the most common problems we’re hear about and get called out for is when a circuit breaker trips, especially if it happens more than once. This can leave a room, an entire floor or even the house in complete darkness.

What can you do when this happens?

A tripped circuit can be caused for all sorts of different reasons, one of these is that there has possibly been a sudden surge of energy. This could be due to lightening and the circuit has been shut off to avoid electrocution. What can you do when this happens?

We would suggest you switch off all appliances and lights affected by the outage.

Unplug everything in the surrounding area. Go to your circuit box and look out for the breaker switch that’s marked OFF. They are sometimes coloured when they are in the OFF position. Switch it back from OFF to ON. Your electricity should come back on now. If it continues tripping it’s sensible to call an electrician, preferably someone you trust is qualified and registered, such as ourselves here at RML Electrical. It could be the continued tripping is caused by a number of different issues.

What kind of issues are we talking about?

Short circuiting is when an electrical wire is constantly causing an overflow of electricity, this will need to be repaired before your circuit stops tripping. Another reason could be circuit overload. There could be too many amps traveling through the circuit and causing it to flip the breaker. This can damage your electronics and go on to start an electrical fire, which is obviously dangerous and a risk to life.

Another potential cause is ground faults.

This is where what’s known as the bare ground wire and hot wire touch the metal box in which they are contained. This will cause a reaction by sending more electricity through the circuit than should, and this will in turn trip the breaker. This again is something you should speak to an electrician about, so it stops occurring.

RML Electrical for the best Electricians in West Lothian.

If your circuit breaker has been tripping on more than one occasion, then get in touch. We’re here to help and we’re all a hard-working team of qualified, registered and trained electricians. We can see what the problem is, and once we know what’s causing it, do something about it. That way you can avoid the tripping breakers becoming something far more serious, causing a potential injury to members of your family and/or electrical fires in your home. Give us a call today and give yourself peace of mind.