Trip switches

Your home has a fuse box. Fuse boxes are sometimes called consumer units.

Fuse boxes, have circuit breakers or trip switches. If an electrical fault occurs, the circuit breakers switch everything off to prevent injury and damage.

Your fuse box will be near your electricity meter. Make sure you know where it is.

If all your electrics go off, and it’s not a power cut (check by looking out at other houses in the street), you’ll need to reset your trip switch. First, unplug all your appliances. Then flick the trip switch (which is usually bigger than all the others) off and on again. Plug everything back in again one at a time, to see whether any of them are faulty and making the trip switch go.

If it goes again, it could be a fault in a light fitting. Repeat the process above by turning all the lights off, then tripping the switch and turning them on again one at a time.

If it keeps happening, call us on 0115 915 2222.