Question: A number of garage doors are affected by circuit breakers which regularly trip. The circuit breaker can only be switched by a committee member or electrician. It’s impractical and doesn’t seem very safe.
An Electricity Meter Room in our building houses breaker switches for each unit’s locked-up garage roller doors. For the 12 doors, two breaker switches each cover six doors. When one switch trips due to, perhaps, overload, six garage doors cannot be opened with a remote. Some of the EC Members had keys to the Electricity Meter Room, and a member would enter the room and flip the switch.
Now, only the strata manager or a qualified electrician can access the room to rectify the situation, irrespective of the time. This will create hardship for residents who cannot manually open the door, which seems impractical. What are the safety or insurance coverage issues with this solution?
Answer: The circuit should be tagged out until this is resolved.
Tripping is a sign of an undersized or faulty circuit, which should be investigated and rectified by a qualified electrician to ensure no further trips or faults occur when using that infrastructure. In theory, the circuit should be tagged out until this is resolved. Consciously overloading circuits is a potential hazard from a fire and electrical perspective.
This post appears in Strata News #655.
Dominic Dodwell
Valen Projects
E: dominic@valenprojects.com.au
P: 0488 666 682
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