"Peter Parry" wrote in message
...

Putting an RCD in stops you being electrocuted whilst changing a
light bulb. As far as I can find out the number of people killed or
admitted to hospital from domestic premises in the UK for this reason
in the last 10 years is precisely zero.

Well, the only person I know personally who's received a serious electric
shock at home received it from a wall-mounted (i.e. fixed) light fitting,
while she was changing a light bulb.

On the other hand in the same period hundreds have died and thousands
been injured in fires at night. Many more have been killed or
injured in falls down stairs at night. Lighting RCD's regularly trip
if a bulb blows (especially on switch on)

No they don't, that's the MCBs which trip. And *their* installation is
considered to be a good thing.

and trip very quickly in a
fire as combustion products create leakage paths in wiring. Both
circumstances create risks considerably greater than the trivial one
of electrocution while changing a bulb. The last thing you want in a
fire at night is the lights going out on you.

I think that to form a balanced opinion at this point, we also need to know
what proportion of fires are caused by electrical faults which might have
been detected by an RCD.

I've just spent 9 years living in a house with a 30mA RCD covering the lot,
with a 6A MCB on the lighting circuit. The former is frowned upon, the
latter is supposed to be good.

The former *never* tripped except when there was a fault on an appliance.
The latter tripped on probably 60% of bulb failures, as often as not
requiring a journey downstairs in the dark (have you seen the number of
people that die in stair-falls) to reset the breaker. If suddenly plunging
a house into darkness is a dangerous, then so are typical 6A type-I (B,
nowadays) MCBs on lighting circuits.

You're very acurately restating uk.d-i-y received wisdom on the subject (as
a grandee, perhaps you're the origin of it :-), but it doesn't match my
experience.

Will