Caught by the simple thing!

Today is Valentines Day and I asked Jan what type of flower she would like….. Plain, wholemeal or self-raising?  I’m such a romantic

OK, what really happened this morning was Jan woke me at 7am to inform me the electricity had gone off.  Apparently the automatic garden water reticulation system had stopped working midway through the 3rd station.  She also reminded me last night she had informed me the air conditioning unit in the bedroom was making a vibrating sound.  Being slightly deaf, I couldn’t hear it!

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes I went to the house switchboard which is located on an exterior wall.  One circuit breaker had indeed ‘tripped’.  I reset it, only for it to trip again several seconds later.  Obviously we had a fault.   I’ve never been impressed with Australian Electrical Wiring Regulations which IMHO are considerably more lax than those in NZ.  The row of circuit breakers on the switchboard are numbered 1 – 9 rather than naming what circuit they represent.  We had a fault on circuit 7, but what did it feed?  Eventually I established it supplied the power sockets in one half of the house along with the air conditioner in the bedroom (the one Jan had hear noises from).  Unlike NZ; the air-con doesn’t have an adjacent isolation switch which meant I couldn’t isolate it from the faulty circuit.  Consequentially I was able to isolate every power point on the circuit apart from the air-con.  We still had a fault and the air-con was looking to be the guilty party.

My next step was to run two extension leads inside the house to get the internet router working along with electricity to the recliner chairs.  This provided both a level of comfort and would enable me to start searching the internet for a copy of the air-con maintenance manual.  I’d now established the fault wasn’t with the electrics of the automatic water reticulation system or any of the appliances in the house.  That left the bedroom air-con. 

Jan asked if we could use a 3rd extension lead to provide power to the TV.  The only spare lead was in the garage and I was using it to supply power to the trailer battery charger.  Off I went to get the lead.  That’s when I discovered the garden water reticulation system had been spraying water onto the end of the extension lead.  I’d found the fault!

Why was the water spraying onto the extension lead?  After examining the reticulation hose I realised one member of the household, who happens to be small, brown and hairy; had been chewing on the hose which had created a hole that nicely lined up with the end of the plug.  When the lawn and garden automatic reticulation system reached station 3 the water squirted into the plug and create the fault.

Always look for the simple thing first!