House lights keep blowing fuses?

Question

The house (in UK) is 8 years old so still pretty young wiring. Yesterday the fuse blew in the fuse box the lights went out and the house alarm went off. I replaced the fuse and everything ok but the problem has got worse and today I went through 10 fuses. I have been told the fuse rating is too low at 5amps but this has been the same all these years with no problems. I haven't changed so much as a light bulb to trigger this but being a bank holiday weekend have been unable to get an electrician. The fuse box is designed with slots for fuses and the slots are a specific size for each type of fuse so a higher rating isnt an option. Any ideas as to the problem ??

Answer 1

Somewhere, somehow, a wire is exposed and grounding out causing the fuse to blow. Any digging, or recent damage done? Sometimes rodents will expose wiring and you get the effect. Being a newer home look for little changes like that. Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The first answer is a good possibility, the other thing to consider is you may have an appliance going on the blink like the fridge or cooler and the motor may be going out.

Answer 3

Your blow fuse is protecting you from fire, and an electrical based fire is not what you want, especially if the problem, when you find it, is near a fuel tank!

The problem is most likely a error of an electrican, or worse, a change made by a homeowner at a later date. It is serious.  Another cause could be squirells, they seem to love to nibble at the plastic coating of the wire, and once exposed the loosened and exposed wire fibres will spark and eventually cause a fire...So I suggest you get an electrican in pronto, and be prepared to rip out some basement walls. My guess is that someone did a renovation and changed wiring so that the system is too heavily loaded. If this is so, then it is especially unsafe because wiring should only be handled by an electrican, it simply is too potentially dangerous to have a handman try to fix this.

So stay away from the fuse box, and resist the urge to fix it rather than the problem. Time for an electrican.