On 23/10/2014 12:30, Uncle Peter wrote:
On Thu, 23 Oct 2014 01:46:36 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

On 23/10/2014 00:28, Uncle Peter wrote:
On Wed, 22 Oct 2014 19:49:12 +0100, ARW
wrote:

"GB" wrote in message
...
On 22/10/2014 11:06, Andrew wrote:
On 21/10/2014 23:50, GB wrote:
On 21/10/2014 23:49, GB wrote:
On 21/10/2014 23:30, Uncle Peter wrote:

It appears she did. And when I said I had fuses she was
horrified.

I've just had some fuses replaced with trip switches on a house I'm
letting out. It makes life an awful lot simpler.


I should have said that the trip switches are just a plug in
replacement, so it's very easy to do.

And any professional sparky reading this will say that this is a
pointless exercise, and in the case of the Wylex variety are actually
more dangerous (under certain conditions) than the rewireable fuse
they
replaced.

Upgraded earth bonding and RCD's are what saves lives, not silly
plug-in
MCBs

It's not intended to save lives. It's intended to stop the tenants
calling
me up in the middle of the night when they blow a fuse.

I agree that an RCD would be good. That's the next change on the list.


Is that as a CU swap or just adding RCD protection to the socket
circuits? I
am sure that you are aware that a fusebox to CU swap can in some cases
open
a can of worms.

Like?

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?...ial _pitfalls


"Nuisance trips. Compared to fuses, modern MCBs react more quickly to
very short term overloads, and may result in loss of power to a whole
lighting circuit when a bulb blows."

Which is what I was saying earlier but nobody believed me.

Fit a type C MCB to lighting circuits and it becomes a non issue.

I have also seen mains halogen GU10 lamps fail and take out a BS3036
rewireable every time - so its not a problem fuses are immune to.

"Discrimination: it can be harder to ensure that the circuit protective
device nearest to a fault will be the only one to open when you have
cascaded MCBs - sometimes upstream fuses interoperate better with
downstream MCBs"

Why on earth would you cascade them?

When feeding a submain to another CU typically - an outbuilding, or
garage etc.

"Extra work: Fitting a CU with RCD can often result in the installation
not working initially due to hitherto unnoticed faults in circuits such
as a borrowed neutral or higher than expected earth leakage. While
discovering these faults is not a bad thing, it can force the
investigation and repair of a number of other issues not directly
related to the original task planned, causing unexpected cost and delay."

Agreed, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

More correctly it was broke, but you were previously unaware.

There are plenty of positive reasons for changing consumer units:

http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?...ns_t o_change





--
Cheers,

John.

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