I am sure oftentimes we all encountered electrical problems in our household.

Come share your problems and descriptions here.

Hopefully some members have similar experience and are able to solve it to share their solutions here.

I'll start as I have a problem that makes me wanna pull out my hair in clumps

Sometimes when I switch on my living room air cond power supply switch, the whole house just blackout as the main switchboard jumped

Anyone can help??

Aiks..bro..i tot u have upgraded to 3Phase? that should be enough power , no? Sorry i m not so sure as well..hoping to learn from here

I think could be the earthing bar problem. The earth bar when the developer implant is not deep enough.

Only the living room air cond power switch, the rest of the other room air cond power switch no problem wor

This post has been edited by phoenix69: Apr 10 2012, 08:23 PM

what tripped? the ELCB or MCB?

if elcb, means there is leakage along the wire. some where shorted to ground

if MCB, means the aircond is taking too much power and trips

see how much amp for ur living room and air conditioner..which loop dat both is taken...and see whether leaking current or something..

Its either you power intake is under current or one of your equipment drawn too much power.

check up with TNB, what type of phase your house use & your amp.
Like one area of can hold x amount of power plug. if you ring the connection up; then it might have an issue overload.

if MCB, the whole house will not black out, so most probably is ELCB.

Errr ...
What is MCB and ELCB ??

for my case, my awning contractor accidentally broke one of my wire...so leaking happend...need to pull out the live wire from DB......if not, will always blackout...

I guess maybe ur wire for that particular aircon is not well installed or aircon is not well wired???

Either the circuit or the aircond or the switch itself is shorted/leaked.

Only few possibility, wiring, the fuse or the aircond itself. You will need electrician to check

MCB = Miniature Circuit Breaker
ELCB = Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker

MCB - is an electrical switch to prevent damange from short circuit or overload
ELCB - a device with high earth impedance to prevent shock. The main purpose is to prevent injury to humans due to electric shock.

Btw from your case, it seems that it is a trip from ELCB instead of MCB, better call for your wireman to have a check.


I will share out a small common "question" by house owner regarding the electrical problem. Not really a problem but in fact just some small issue that I always have a question mark when I was kid.

Sometimes when you turn on/off a power switch, you will see sparkling happen on the switch button, this can be due to 2 reasons, the quality of switch or the other reason is due to the air's dielectric constant is broken. Let say you have 2 terminals and the distance between those terminals is about few cm and when the air's dielectric constant strength is broken the air will behave like conductor. Then you can observe the spark there

Disconect the supply at your air con, swicth it on n test. My guess is the air con man connect the wire wrong or he didnt connect it carefully, neutral touch earth..

phoenix69, why dont just ask TNB or a licensed electrician about it? This are their work; asking forum might also not lead you to any DIY solution.

my guess also is the aircon man connect wire wrong.....

phoenix69@ you need to tell us more detail your problem. Like which breaker is trip. Elcb or mcb. Happen every time switch on or sometime. What is your aircon hp. 1phase or 3phase. If the mcb trip what is the spec of the mcb.

More detail easy for us to pinpoint the problem.

In the fuse box there, there is a blue switch that affect all the house power supply. That one tripped.
I'll go check later to see what is written there.
The thing tripped when I switch on the Living room air cond power supply switch. Air cond not yet even switch on via remote.
This occourance happen randomly. 8 times out of 10.
Call my electrician via phone and he say Air Cond Unit problem. True or not ???

Main MCB and ELCB both affect the whole house power supply. Why your electrician not coming to check? Who install the aircon?

May ask your aircon installer to come back check for you....Usually installer will test aircon after installed to check the whether got water leaking or not....that time the installer didn't test aircon? did the aircon worked?

8 out of 10, it cannot be the aircond, the aircond itself that is broken. When the aircond sometimes works it is not the aircond. It could be the wiring.

When was this happened the first time? After installing the aircond? The aircond just installed recently?

When is this most often happen? During raining day? If during raining days the wire outside to the compressor shorted as rain water conduct the leakage.This is more so the leakage is not high. If high the MCB should trip instead of the main ELCB(the blue switch) where live touches neutral. ELCB trip when leak to earth happens like live wire touches earth.

This lead to another question. What is the rating of the MCB? 10A, 20A, 32A? and do you know whcih one in the first place?

Electrician and Air cond installer diffrent people. Electrician should be coming back to completer some balance job later but when I called him yesterday, he say air cond problem.

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Added on April 12, 2012, 10:20 amWill have to do that, it seems. When installed no issue. problem only comes later.

This post has been edited by phoenix69: Apr 12 2012, 10:20 AM

Aircond installer vs electrician !!!!

The electrician lay cable from main to the switch and to the aircond indoor unit. To test this circuit is to disconnect the aircond indoor unit supply and connect the 3 wire (live, neutral and earth) to a power point and use a fan plug it on and swtich on. If no trip the circuit is ok, the electrician can go home otherwise it is clearly his fault. Then get the aircond installer and get him to pull a new cable from the indoor unit to the out door unit.

Haiz, dunno where ithe issue is lor. wiring or air cond. It happens randomly. Even on sunny days, but recently there is been a lot of rain. Maybe also can be the rain
Where to see the MCB rating?

Ya, on sunny day the water is sticking there, not completely dry yet.

MCB. see this C32. C for current i think.

I'm assuming that you have a ON / OFF switch before you are able to use the remote control to turn ON / OFF you account. * Currently lot of them without used ON / OFF swithc anymore.

You may want to check is the wires in the ON / OFF switch been connected properly, because if the wires lost than it may short circuit as well. If you able to turn ON the aircon try use the remote control to ON / OFF and see any trip on your ELB lol.

Another thing you may want ot check is beside the aircon, is the wire been used for other equipment? Perhaps close all the equipment and only use the aircon to see any impact or not.

Check the outdoor compressor, maybe wires expose and create low current short circuit. Or could it be your wall is wet, and short the cables too.

I think he dont fully understand what we are talking about.

Maybe this is a little easy to understand. When ELCB trips it is because there is a current leak. And the leak most likely is somewhere between the indoor unit cable that connect to the out door compressor. The cable could have been cut but not broken. The cable has 3 wires inside. When water get into the cut cable, current take a short cut, flow/jump from one of the exposed (cut) wire to another its nearby exposed (cut) wire and when this happens the ELCB trip. Another leak is the cut/exposed wire when wet some current flow to the wet wall down to the earth and the ELCB trips.