Kettle or electrics?

usedtobe

2 year old house. Kettle keeps tripping fuse box. It trips the kitchen sockets switch and the big one on that side of the board. Nothing else goes off. It’s getting more of a faff to reset, also. Kettle is a cheap Russel Hobbs or something. Last kettle did it too. We bought the new one, and same again. 
Wife wants to call an electrician. I want to buy a stove top kettle.

Whaddya think?

BloodEagle

It’s the electrics- I used to have a similar problem with a microwave that would trip the power to the whole house if the kitchen light was on at the same time, this meant I quite frequently would end up microwaving something standing in the dark. Never fixed it, I just eventually moved out 

usedtobe

Can you be more specific? Wife says the little trip switches can go, though they should last longer than this. Do I need to get a man in then?
Thank you.

Sesh

Have you tried plugging the kettle in elsewhere? If you can get the fault to move around the various ring mains you my have then it's the kettle. If it is a fault in the kitchen wiring then a stove kettle will avoid the problem but it will still be there. Any wiring issue not dealt with properly could be dangerous. I'd be looking a getting an electrician in myself. You could also check in the fuse rating for the kitchen sockets in case it isn't correct. If there is another of the same rating on you board swap them and see if the fault moves.

octatonic

It is probably the socket the kettle is attached to.

usedtobe

We tried it elsewhere in the kitchen. Was ok first time, and after that, was same as before. Wife thinks it’s worse with a full kettle, of cold water,  than say half full. She tried it in another room, but only once. It worked fine.. she only tried it the once though. Will retry..

stickyfiddle

usedtobe said:

We tried it elsewhere in the kitchen. Was ok first time, and after that, was same as before. Wife thinks it’s worse with a full kettle, of cold water,  than say half full. She tried it in another room, but only once. It worked fine.. she only tried it the once though. Will retry..

Unless you have some kind of smart kettle that changes its settings based on how much water is in it that's very unlikely.

+1 on trying it in different rooms - somewhere that's on a different fuse.

usedtobe

Just boiled it in lounge,  twice with a kettle full of cold. No problems. It starts off ok in the kitchen, though, first boil this morning was fine. It seems to get worse as the day goes on. Kettle is always on here, pretty much.
I have a socket tester somewhere. I’ll dig it out and see what it says. Thinking we might be getting a man in though..

octatonic

usedtobe said:

We tried it elsewhere in the kitchen. Was ok first time, and after that, was same as before. Wife thinks it’s worse with a full kettle, of cold water,  than say half full. She tried it in another room, but only once. It worked fine.. she only tried it the once though. Will retry..

OK, so not the socket then.

Simplest solution is to buy another electric kettle and if it is still happening then it will be something with that run of electrical cable.
In one place we did we found a nail through the neutral that caused this.
Other times it was related to a ground wire being partially disconnected at the socket.

Safest thing to do is get an electrician to do an electrical safety test, but that will cost the most unless you have my wife's taste in kettles (google Kitchen Aid- yes, she really paid that for a kettle).

ICBM

Sounds like an electrics issue - probably being shown up by the kettle because it draws a high current. I have exactly that fault in my kitchen somewhere... we discovered it when we had an extension built and the electrician connected the old house wiring to the new distribution box - it would trip as soon as anything was turned on in the kitchen.

It works fine as long as the kitchen is treated as a sub-circuit, but not if it’s connected to the rest of the ring main... he said it was because a neutral connection has been made to the wrong place somewhere, so current going up one wire comes down a different one which appears as a ‘leak’ and trips the modern RCD distribution box - it wouldn’t have mattered when the house was built because it was pre-RCD. By making the whole kitchen one sub-circuit with a single neutral return to the box, it eliminates the problem - and is safe and legal. So he did that, since the alternative was to strip out the whole kitchen to find the wrong connection...

@Spark240 might be able to confirm if this is correct, but it sounds logical to me.

jonnyburgo

We’ve had numerous electrics over the years the best one being an “eco kettle” but they always break eventually. We’ve had a stove top le creuscet one for the last 4 years it’s great, nice whistle too.

boogieman

Get a sparks in and have it checked over. Electrical faults aren’t funny, just when you think it’s only a loose connection they have a tendency to kill you and/or burn your house down. 

Phil_aka_Pip

Worth getting electrics checked, but get a proper kettle that sits on a gas ring anyway.

FWIW friends of our family had their kitchen done out and the dog refused to go in there. Something frightened her. One night the kitchen went up in flames, and the fire investigation determined that it was a dodgy socket that was continually sparking and eventually caused the fire. The dog could hear it but the humans couldn't.

The kitchen bloke was found not to have the relevant sparkies qualifications and got done. The kitchen was re-fitted with proper electrics this time. The dog became happy to go in the kitchen.

57Deluxe

what valves does it have?

maltingsaudio

boogieman said:

Get a sparks in and have it checked over. Electrical faults aren’t funny, just when you think it’s only a loose connection they have a tendency to kill you and/or burn your house down. 

This ^^^ what starts with a dodgy kettle could end up with an insurance claim

Longtallronnie

Sounds like one of the cables is partially trapped behind the socket. Not quite enough to cause a fault condition until the current draw rises, causing a short to earth. Had faults like this in the past where I've ended up removing/refitting every faceplate and the fault disappears. Sometimes you'd find evidence of a cable being squashed or a nick in the insulation.
The thing with the amount of water in the kettle could possibly be that the current is drawn over a longer period when full thus creating more heat. Would also explain it getting worse throughout the day but really the main thing is getting the wiring checked properly.

randella

Get a sparky in.  Not worth the risk.  I've seen a few electrical bodges in houses that set my teeth on edge.

In a two-year-old house it's probably a simple fault but get someone skilled who you trust to reassure you and fix anything necessary.

ToneControl

I've had humidifiers and an clothes iron trip the RCD when in use, in different parts of the house (when they are failing)
Anything containing heater elements exposed to water can develop this fault: try a new kettle
It may be that the RCD on the kitchen sockets is a different rating to the others, I assume you have RCD in all of the house

boogieman

ToneControl said:

I've had humidifiers and an clothes iron trip the RCD when in use, in different parts of the house (when they are failing)
Anything containing heater elements exposed to water can develop this fault: try a new kettle
It may be that the RCD on the kitchen sockets is a different rating to the others, I assume you have RCD in all of the house

He already said the kettle doesn’t trip the breaker in another part of the house. The fault is just confined to the kitchen ring, so it’s a problem with the hard wiring or breaker. 

crunchman

ToneControl said:

I've had humidifiers and an clothes iron trip the RCD when in use, in different parts of the house (when they are failing)
Anything containing heater elements exposed to water can develop this fault: try a new kettle
It may be that the RCD on the kitchen sockets is a different rating to the others, I assume you have RCD in all of the house

Didn't the OP say this was the second kettle that does this?

He also said that it doesn't happen in another room so it does like a problem with the wiring.

I think he also said that it does it on a different socket in the kitchen, so it's unlikely to be the socket.

Definitely get an electrician out.

Hattigol

Stove top kettles look cool but if you go down that route, be prepared to start pre-planning cups of tea by about 20 minutes - they take forever.