Wondered if anybody can tell me why the following happened.

Today I wanted to see if a socket I was working on was live. I got trusty multimeter and placed prongs onto the terminals in the back of the socket (one on live, one on neutral) expecting to get a reading, or not. Anyway, the most almighty bang occured and the fuse tripped.

What did I do wrong?

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Mattonella Tile Studio Ltd
Unit 11, Stone Enterprise Centre
Emerald Way
Stone Business Park
Stone
ST15 0SR

www.mattonella-tiles.co.uk

Could you have possibly touched the earth with the live prong on your multimeter?? Known it happen before.

That's a possibility as whoever wired the socket up previously hadn't put any insulating sleeve on the earth.

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Mattonella Tile Studio Ltd
Unit 11, Stone Enterprise Centre
Emerald Way
Stone Business Park
Stone
ST15 0SR

www.mattonella-tiles.co.uk

My son whoi is a sparky gave me a plug socket tester which I find slightly easier than a multimeter

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[size="2"][color="Blue"]TILING LOGISTICS Aqua Mix Trained Operator. Specialist Restoration, Grinding, Honing, Polishing and Repair of all Natural Stone. Marble, Granite, Travertine, Limestone, Slate & Quarries to name but a few. We also do Grafitti removal, grout recolouring, sealing, resealing and cosmetic repairs. E Mail any questions to tilinglogistics@hotmail.com

I have got one of these - brilliant bit of kit

even if you need to take off the faceplate to tile (isolate fisrt), then re-wire, just plug in and it tells you if you have done it right or wrong

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Simon
S & T Home Maintenance
Wall & Floor Tiling
www.st-homemaintenance.com