CK Emergency Electricians 247

Electrical Fault Finding and Repair Across Sussex and the South East

☎01273 000 247 WhatsApp

Electrical fault finding

Tracing Tripping Circuits, Power Loss and Dead Sockets

Electrical faults rarely announce themselves clearly. A breaker trips the moment you switch the kettle on, half the lights die while the sockets stay live, or the power drops out at night and comes back on its own. We attend across Sussex and the South East, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to work out what is actually going on.

Fault finding is a process of elimination, not a guess. We isolate circuits one at a time, take insulation resistance and continuity readings, check earth fault loop impedance and test RCD operation, then narrow the problem down to a specific circuit, accessory or length of cable. That is the difference between a fix that lasts and one that trips again next week.

Some faults are found in minutes and some take longer, particularly intermittent ones that only appear when a circuit warms up or when it rains. Whatever we find, we explain it in plain terms, tell you what the repair involves and what it will cost before we start, and test and certify the work once it is done.

Electrical Faults by CK Electrical

About this service

What Electrical Fault Finding Involves

Signs You Have an Electrical Fault

The usual signals are a breaker or RCD that keeps tripping, sockets or lights that have gone dead on one circuit while the rest of the house works, flickering or dimming when an appliance starts up, and a burning or fishy smell around a socket, switch or fuse board.

Less obvious warnings include warm faceplates, sockets that spark when you unplug something, a mild tingle from a metal appliance or tap, and buzzing from a light fitting or the consumer unit. Any of these is worth investigating rather than living with, because the underlying cause tends to get worse rather than settle down.

How We Trace the Fault

We start with the fuse board and work outwards. Circuits are isolated and tested individually so the faulty one can be separated from the healthy ones, which on its own often restores power to most of the property while the repair is arranged. Readings are recorded as we go.

From there we narrow it down: insulation resistance testing to find damaged or damp cable, continuity testing for broken conductors and loose connections, and inspection of accessories, junction boxes and appliance flexes. Borrowed neutrals, nail or screw damage through a cable, water in an outside light and failing appliances are all common culprits.

What Happens on the Visit

Tell us what changed and when, on the phone if you can: which breaker trips, whether it trips straight away or after a while, and what was switched on at the time. That shortens the search. On arrival the electrician makes the installation safe first, then begins testing.

Once the cause is identified you are told what it is, what the options are and what the repair will cost, before any of it is carried out. Many faults can be repaired on the same visit. Where a part is needed or the work is larger, the circuit is left in a safe condition and the return is arranged with you.

Safety, Testing and Certification

Repairs are carried out to the current wiring regulations, BS 7671, by Part P registered and fully insured electricians. When the fault is fixed, the affected circuit is tested again and you are issued with the appropriate certification, so there is a written record of the condition it was left in.

If you have a fault right now, switch off and unplug anything you suspect, leave the circuit off at the board and do not keep resetting a breaker that will not stay in. Repeated resetting on a live fault is how damage and fires start. Call us and leave it alone until we arrive.

Response times

What Governs the Wait, and How a Fault Spreads

The honest answer is that it depends, and it is fairer to tell you what it depends on. Where the property sits in Sussex or the wider South East matters, as does the time of day, whether anyone can be there to let an engineer in, and how dangerous the symptoms you describe sound. You are told plainly where things stand when you call, rather than handed a figure that might not hold.

The phone is answered 24 hours a day, every day of the year, nights, weekends and bank holidays included, and the call itself does real work. Describing what you can see, hear and smell lets us sort a genuine hazard from work that is better booked in. A burning smell, scorching, sparking, a shock felt from a tap, or water that has reached wiring is treated ahead of a single dead socket.

Some faults are not ours to fix, and saying so on the phone saves a wasted visit. If the whole street is dark, the fault sits on the supply side and belongs to the distribution network operator, reported free on 105. Where it is yours, turn the installation off at the main switch if it is safe to reach, leave anything scorched or wet alone, and stop resetting a breaker that will not hold.

None of that is caution for its own sake. A loose or high resistance connection gives off heat whenever the circuit is loaded, and that heat carbonises the terminal and the insulation around it, which raises the resistance further, which makes more heat again. An MCB does not see it, because it protects the cable against overload and short circuit rather than the quality of a termination. What starts at one accessory can end as cable to replace and a wall to make good.

A shock works differently. Insulation that has failed can put metalwork at a voltage it should not be at, and a circuit protective conductor that is no longer continuous is what leaves it there, because fault current has no path back to operate the protective device. Completing that path takes a person, which is why what seems harmless in a dry room is another matter in your bathroom or outdoors. Equipment suffers too, since a lost neutral can leave appliances seeing an abnormal voltage.

Inside a modern consumer unit

Our process

How We Work, from First Visit to Final Certificate

  1. 01

    Your Call, Day or Night

    You can call us at any hour, every day of the year, including bank holidays. In an emergency we ask what has stopped working and whether anything is hot, sparking or smelling of burning, and tell you what to switch off until we arrive. Booked work, from a landlord certificate to solar panels or EV charging, starts on the same call.

  2. 02

    Arrival & Making Safe

    A Part P registered and fully insured engineer attends and makes the installation safe before anything else. Where there is a risk, the affected circuit or your fuse board is isolated, and anything that cannot be put right straight away is left in a safe condition. Planned work follows the same rule: circuits are proved dead before they are worked on.

  3. 03

    Diagnosis by Testing, Not Guesswork

    We work from readings rather than assumptions. Testing can include continuity, insulation resistance, polarity, earth fault loop impedance and RCD testing. The results show where a fault sits, what an installation can safely take, and whether a problem is inside your property or on the incoming supply, which belongs to the distribution network operator and is reported free on 105.

  4. 04

    Your Options & the Cost

    Before any repair or installation begins, we explain the options: what needs doing now, what can safely wait, and whether repair or replacement is the sensible choice. Quotes are free and carry no obligation, and nothing goes ahead until you agree the price, so there are no call-out surprises. If parts or a return visit are needed, we tell you then.

  5. 05

    Carrying Out the Work

    The same qualified engineers who took your call carry out the work, whether that is an overnight repair, a fuse board replacement, new lighting, smoke and heat alarms, a rewire, an inspection, solar panels or an EV charging point. It is done to the current wiring regulations, with cables and accessories fixed securely and neatly, and disruption kept to a minimum.

  6. 06

    Final Testing & Certification

    Before we leave, the work is tested and checked in operation, and the working area is left tidy. You are told plainly what was done and anything worth keeping an eye on. Certification is supplied where the work calls for it, so you hold a written record of what was carried out and the results of the testing.

Nuisance tripping

When Nothing Is Broken and the RCD Still Trips

Some installations trip with nothing broken in them. Most circuits and many appliances pass a small current to earth, by design in anything with electronic filtering inside, and an RCD works by comparing what leaves on the line with what returns on the neutral. The difference is what it acts on, and it cannot tell harmless standing leakage from a genuine fault. Individually those amounts are nothing at all. Added together across a house, they climb.

An RCD rated at 30 mA is allowed to operate anywhere between roughly half that and its full rating, so an installation whose standing leakage already sits close to the level at which its own device operates has little room left. One more machine switched on takes the total past it. That is why the tripping keeps a timetable of its own, landing at the same hour most evenings. Nothing has failed. There is simply more connected than there was.

This fault is plainest when nothing has been touched. An installation with enough switched off reads perfectly well, so it has to be measured as you actually run it: what each circuit contributes in leakage with the usual things switched on, what those figures come to together, and whether the device still operates within its rated limits. A spread of modest readings with a high total says one thing. One circuit well above the others is a fault, and treated as one.

Where the leakage is cumulative, the answer is a change to the protection, not a repair. Dividing the load between more than one RCD, or giving circuits their own RCBOs, leaves each device with only its own share, so a trip takes one circuit off rather than most of your house. An older board that will not accept individual devices usually has to be replaced first. Where the readings show nothing damaged, there is no cable to chase and no wall to open.

Insulation resistance readings taken at a consumer unit

Common questions

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my RCD or breaker keep tripping?

Usually because a circuit or an appliance is leaking current to earth, or because a conductor has been damaged. Testing each circuit separately shows which one is at fault, and unplugging appliances in turn shows whether the problem is the wiring or something plugged into it.

Can you find a fault that only happens occasionally?

Yes, though intermittent faults take longer because the conditions that trigger them have to be recreated or the readings interpreted while the circuit is healthy. Anything you can tell us about when it happens, such as in wet weather or when the heating comes on, narrows the search considerably.

Will I be left without power while you look for the fault?

Usually not for long, though it depends on the fault. Circuits have to be switched off to be tested, but the aim is to isolate the faulty one and restore the rest as soon as possible. In many properties that means lighting and most sockets are back on before the repair itself is finished.

Is a burning smell from a socket an emergency?

Treat it as one. Switch that circuit off at the fuse board, do not use the socket and call us. A burning or fishy smell usually means a connection is overheating, which can char the accessory and the cable behind it. We are available 24 hours a day, every day.

More from us

Other Electrical Services

Get in touch

Talk to an Electrician Today

Contact us today on 01273 000 247 for help, advice or a free no-obligation quote.

Contact Us

Copyright © 2026 CK Electrical Ltd trading as CK Emergency Electricians 247.

Unit 1, Example Business Park, Example Road, Brighton, BN1 1AA.

Privacy and Cookies | Website by CK Electrical