Having suspicions about an electrician
Hello, I'll try to summarize the story as much as possible. But TLDR an electrician told me about an issue in my house that doesn't quite add up to me, and I think he may be scamming me.
I'm in Spain so we have a 230V installation if that matters, basically I needed to upgrade my air conditioner and knew an electrician who could do the installation.
The previous machine, instead of being connected through the connections box behind the wall, was hooked to a normal EU socket with a power cord. I guess it's not ideal but doing the installation properly would make it more complicated. The previous machine worked without issue for decades.
So when installing the new machine, we decided to do it the same way, but the power cord would be installed in the back of the socket through the connections instead of through a standard plug. I still know it's not ideal but I'm never going to unplug it so it's ok.
So here comes the issue, after plugging the air conditioner, the electrician turns on the differential switch at home and it instantly trips. He tries a few more times and every time it instantly trips. After some back and forth he finally "fixes" it and tells me "its a polarity issue with my home". He also tells me my home's ground wire has power through it, and that he should check out the whole house to figure out where's the issue.
The thing is:
- It makes absolutely no sense to me that the differential switch trips like that if the previous machine worked without issue, and provided the new one is connected properly. The only change in the whole home was that specific socket's connection. The only possible explanation is that the socket was wrongly connected, and if that's the case, either the electrician is dumb as rocks or they were trying to convince me to pay for an expensive revision. The only polarity issue I can think of is that he had switched the ground with phase or neutral, and BTW the wires are properly colored, although that shouldn't stop a licensed electrician from doing it right. So if that's the case he must have done it on purpose.
- I checked the voltage in the ground wire myself in the main switches box (sorry if that's not the name in English) and I get 500 mV from the neutral wire to the ground wire, and 240V from the phase wire to the ground wire. As far as I'm aware this is perfectly normal.
- A solar panel system was installed 4-5 years ago (by a different person), and the whole thing included a revision on the house's electric system, including an important upgrade in the ground wire to make sure it works as expected. The house passed all the requirements to have the solar panels installed.
So the question is: is there any possible way to justify all this sequence of events? The differential switch tripping and him telling me the ground has current despite me checking and finding it all normal? I don't really know much about electricity so there's a good chance that I'm missing something, but I'm having a real hard time trusting this man anymore. And basically I feel he's been lying to my face.
Which would be really dumb BTW, because he was going to be hired for two projects: an EV socket and a solar panel upgrade.