Garage ring main trip.

[Johnnyt]

I have a detached garage with its own CU and ring main.

The ring recently tripped unknown to me and the inevitable  happened to the contents of the second freezer.

is it possible to set up an alert system to notify my phone or other of a trip, without home assistant etc or temp sensors.

i have good WiFi in the garage which does not rely on the same ring.

Ideas gratefully received.

The ring is fine and it looks like a one-off incident with the compressor duty cycling.

[-rick-]

Not a recommendation but there are lots of fridge/freezer monitors out there. Better to monitor the temperature in the unit vs the power supply.

 

Here is one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/GoveeLife-Digital-Thermometer-Control-Wireless/dp/B0F9KWHV4S

[Nickfromwales]

13 hours ago, Johnnyt said:

I have a detached garage with its own CU and ring main.

The ring recently tripped unknown to me and the inevitable  happened to the contents of the second freezer.

is it possible to set up an alert system to notify my phone or other of a trip, without home assistant etc or temp sensors.

i have good WiFi in the garage which does not rely on the same ring.

Ideas gratefully received.

The ring is fine and it looks like a one-off incident with the compressor duty cycling.

Was it an MCB that tripped, or an earth fault device such as an RCD or RCBO? 
 

May be a good idea to take an MCB to a single socket and have the freezer running off that, to avoid future nuisance tripping. 
 

PS, if it’s tripped once, it’s likely that it’s a slow developing fault condition and it may be on borrowed time. With a freezer for bulk food stuff, I’d seriously consider a new freezer, if this one’s into double digits of old age.

[Mattg4321]

2 hours ago, Nickfromwales said:

Was it an MCB that tripped, or an earth fault device such as an RCD or RCBO? 
 

May be a good idea to take an MCB to a single socket and have the freezer running off that, to avoid future nuisance tripping. 
 

PS, if it’s tripped once, it’s likely that it’s a slow developing fault condition and it may be on borrowed time. With a freezer for bulk food stuff, I’d seriously consider a new freezer, if this one’s into double digits of old age.

You can’t omit RCD protection for a specific appliance any more. In fact it’s very difficult to omit for any reason these days where BS1363 sockets are concerned 

[Nickfromwales]

39 minutes ago, Mattg4321 said:

You can’t omit RCD protection for a specific appliance any more. In fact it’s very difficult to omit for any reason these days where BS1363 sockets are concerned 

On existing installs, or on new? Or both?

[Johnnyt]

It's new build 2021 and with rcbo's

There is both a fridge and freezer on the ring, fortunately the fridge only had bottled beer in so no damage there.

I have a few spare ways on the CU so could have a dedicated radial to it.

I have ordered a wifi based thermometer alarm.

Let's wait and see

[Nickfromwales]

4 minutes ago, Johnnyt said:

the fridge only had bottled beer in so no damage there

Thank goodness, lol. 

[Mr Punter]

Best drink it quickly anyway, just in case.

[Mattg4321]

1 hour ago, Nickfromwales said:

On existing installs, or on new? Or both?

Well if it’s already in your own house, then nobody is going to force you to change it, but you can’t install a new socket without RCD protection or remove RCD protection from one that already has it. 

[ProDave]

2 hours ago, Mattg4321 said:

Well if it’s already in your own house, then nobody is going to force you to change it, but you can’t install a new socket without RCD protection or remove RCD protection from one that already has it. 

What you can do for that circuit is separate over current protection and earth leakage protection.  That would tell you why it is tripping (though not stop it) which would make solving the issue easier.

 

And a separate circuit for the freezer would also protect it from something else in the garage tripping it.

[-rick-]

2 minutes ago, ProDave said:

What you can do for that circuit is separate over current protection and earth leakage protection.  That would tell you why it is tripping (though not stop it) which would make solving the issue easier.

 

Seems an expensive way of doing it (if you have to pay for an electrician anyway). In a garage I guess there's not much else on the ring (that couldn't be left unplugged if not in active use). Most likely it's the freezer itself or, if you had heavy rain recently, a damaged cable getting wet (at least here we haven't had much rain at all, and in a newish build I'd expect if an area is wet it'd be pretty obvious).

 

So my thought is spend a little time trying to track it down, but maybe instead of paying an electrician to investigate just put that money into a new fridge/freezer.