Circuit breakers tripped the other day and the one which does the power sockets in the new part of the house (extension) refused to reset.

Called in a local sparks whose best guess was that a mouse had committed hari-kiri somewhere by chewing on a cable.  But he wasn't able to trace where and suggested we might have to start pulling down ceilings, pulling up floorboards etc. to find the break.

Before I get into the mess and expense of trashing half my house, is there a more sophisticated tracing tool which could pinpoint where the break is so that the hole we have to make is as small as possible ?

If so, it this something the likes of EDF etc. are likely to have ? While I prefer to use a local independent where I can, I don't mind spending a bit more on a big company callout if it gets straight to the problem....

You have my sympathies.

Once you get your cable fixed, you need to go round the house to find out how they are getting in then fill up the holes with steel wool.

big_all wrote on Jul 31^st, 2010, 2:08pm:


LOL!  Wish it were true in all cases.  We had an intermittent L-N short and also an intermittent N-E short but no dead rodent.

The other anti-vermin thing we did was install in each of the double-gable roofs those sonic/electronic repellers.  So far so good...but really think that the steel wool has been the main reason why we haven't got any at the moment.  Poison in the roof void was so pointless because of all the loft insulation. It was impossible to get underneath easily to see where their runs were and so where to put the posion down.  I must have stuck 10kG up there and still they came, died, smelled, came, died, smelled.......

That only works if the ring was designed and installed properly