Garage Circuit Breaker burning

danoriordan1402

Got a nasty smell when I entered the garage earlier, saw this - will get onto an electrician in the morning but cant get my head around the way its wired( you can ignore the shower, there was one when we used to wash the dogs off out there). No longer used.

I can see the lights have tripped the 10A, that brown that goes into the bottom comes from the top of the RCD?? One circuit comes out the top of the 10A for the lights, make sense, Two cables are out the top of the 20A breaker feeding the sockets… but that one skinny looking wire, wrapped in black insulating tape seems to be looping the live into the 20A breaker - this looks wrong, I dunno, no protection on the shower breaker - i'll check what it comes off int he house consumer unit???. I will prob knock off the whole board for safety as the electrician that wired it 15 years ago was a bit on the sketchy side if I recall.

Sleamhain

Sketchy indeed, just shut everything off there until you get someone competent to look at it. If you have an MCB for the garage back at your main board you can shut that off too

The RCD is feeding the two MCBs, that's why it's looped around from top of RCD to bottom of MCBs.

The skinny cable you say is in black insulated tape, looks more to me like the insulation has burned. It's not large enough to be feeding the MCBs and has overheated.

The shower does have protection, that looks like a 40A RCD it's wired from

There shouldn't be 3 neutrals on top of the RCD either.

Anyway, it needs a new board. The cable feeding the board as well, what size is that? Hard to tell on the photo, but I would expect that to be at least a 10mm square, but it doesn't look it.

Lucky escape!