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Tim Watts[_3_]

On 06/03/18 20:26, wrote:
On 06/03/2018 17:41, Tim Watts wrote:
On 06/03/18 15:00, wrote:
Are there any reasons to choose one make over another?
I need a split amd3 board with one section RCD protected, one section
of RCBOs and a few unprotected MCBs for sheds and other things with
their own RCDs - probably a total of 14 circuits. Without any reason
to choose a particular manufacturer I'm drawn towards MK because I've
got a few MK MCBs - is there a good reason to choose a different
manufacturer?

Hager is very solid and the range of devices is excellent. Also you
are less likely to find you can't buy a new MCB or RCBO that fits
(properly) in 10 years time like one crap brand I had dealings with.
Hmm I've now seen other recommendations for Hager and a few negative
comments about MK - I'll investigate further.

If you can stump up the dosh, consider going all RCBOs - it's a
superior system to a couple of RCDs.
The plan is to put the critical stuff on RCBOs, but I'll look at the
cost difference with Hager.

You can't have "unprotected" MCBs for anything much now - all sockets
need to be RCD protected and unless you are cunning with the cabling,
the routing of that tends to demand RCD protection.
Understood, but the sheds and car charger all have their own RCDs.

One thing you could consider (what I did) as 14 circuits is a lot and
clearly some of yours are external:

Take a 40A +/- RCBO circuit to a secondary CU nearer where your
external circuits go (possibly even an external building if that makes
sense to run on from there) and populate that with MCBs.
I'm trying to do the opposite. At the moment I have two sub mains from
the garage to old Wylex fuseboards (one for lighting and one for
sockets) in the centre of the house, plus a whole bunch of small CUs in
the garage. I want to consolidate the whole mess into one location:
probably one CU for the house and a second one for the garage, workshop,
sheds and outside sockets.

Indeed - there is no right and wrong here.

My CU was a bit full (I like to leave gaps between each pair of RCBO for
cooling) and all my external circuits exit from the other side of the
house - so it made sense to put a secondary CU upstairs near the exit point.

I also had to site a small CU over a doorway thanks to EDF's annoying 3m
rule on meter tails...

I don't normally ave anything good to say about American power systems,
but the fecking enormous breaker panels they install does make things
much more pleasant to work with:

http://www.kilowatthvac.com/assets/i...ut-breaker.jpg