Intermittent tripping can be a really challenging thing to get to the bottom of. Why? It's in the name.
The fault is intermittent. It isn't always there to be found.
We had attended a commercial warehouse on a call out. A staff member reports roughly every 2 weeks, on a weekend, they'll come in to open up and he'll just flick the breaker back on and it'll probably stay of for another two weeks.
We had suggested that's quite an odd pattern - almost like it is in sync with a particular staff member's shift pattern - or something similar. Do you have a particularly different delivery over the weekend? Are the store hours different or longer on the weekend? Really trying to explore this pattern to get to the bottom of it.
I had mentioned that trying to find something so intermittent could be a real hard thing to do, and perhaps it'd be easier to start renewing this particular lighting circuit, the motion sensors, and the breaker itself. We submitted a quote to start replacing as a process of elimination.
Fast forward 6 weeks later. We get a call from the same warehouse. This time it was a weekday. But it was the same again - and a different member of staff. I had explained what was said on the last visit, flicked the breaker back on, and headed up to the part of the warehouse where these lights were tripping off. I was explaining the complexity of fault finding something so unpredictable and a quote was in for management to sign off and commence.
Just as I was saying this, an almighty bang came out of the roof above us, and the lights all went out. The first time it had ever gone bang. The staff member caught the flash out of the corner of his eye - lucky, because I hadn't. Pinpointing down on this area of the roof, some 3 to 4 meters in the air. getting the ladder out and on a closer inspection - Lo and behold, the ugliest, downright damaged and filthy motion sensor you will ever see in your lifetime. The plastic moulding had warped. the cloudy motion sensor itself was orange from water damage and corrosion. the insides just as orange from small but often roof leaks causing the water damage. Dead as a door nail.
We bypassed this sensor, offered it into an enclosure to tidy the wiring up, and introduced a 'drip loop' to let water drop away from the connections if the water was to run along the cable. We told the staff member the lights can be switched on and off via the breaker til the motion sensor was replaced.
It had rained heavily on the way up to this emergency call. That was a lucky find!
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