i just had a free survey on my electrics and the inspector says i need a new
consumer unit cause i dont have a rcd on my socket outlets. is this a
requirement or is he just the salesman he appeared to be

larry

"LOZ34" wrote in message
...
i just had a free survey on my

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 01:43:06 +0100, "LOZ34"
wrote:

i just had a free survey on my electrics and the inspector says i need a new
consumer unit cause i dont have a rcd on my socket outlets. is this a
requirement or is he just the salesman he appeared to be

What was the initial purpose of the "free survey"? And who is this
"inspector"?

Consumer units aren't so expensive, sales people aren't going to make
their targets by selling individual consumer units, so there has to be
some other value-added sale to this.

On a separate note entirely, having lived in houses which had no
consumer unit with RCD protection and houses that do, I'd be inclined
to want to change to RCD protection regardless. They can be life
savers, and also prevent fires from starting up. You can't put a price
on these things.

Andrew

Do you need a handyman service? Check out our
web site at http://www.handymac.co.uk

In message , LOZ34
writes
i just had a free survey on my electrics and the inspector says i need a new
consumer unit cause i dont have a rcd on my socket outlets. is this a
requirement or is he just the salesman he appeared to be

He is basically a salesman.

Was this one of those free surveys'; that leccy companies offer? What
did he actually do?

No you don't *need* and RCD or a new CU (unless they are in a dangerous
state of course).

RCD protection on sockets is a very good idea though - particularly on
sockets used to power stuff used outdoors, butt here are various ways
of providing this.

Yes you can put in a new CU and cover some of the circuits with an RCD,
you can put in an RCD just to cover say your downstairs ring main, or
you can just protect say a socket used for running out doors stuff.
--
Chris French, Leeds

In message ,
"LOZ34" wrote:

i just had a free survey on my electrics and the inspector says i need a new
consumer unit cause i dont have a rcd on my socket outlets. is this a
requirement or is he just the salesman he appeared to be

larry


RCD protection of sockets which can feed equipment used outdoors and
also of certain equipment installed in (for example) bathrooms is a
requirement of the currently in-force IEE wiring regulations. However,
if your installation was installed to a previous set of regulations and
fully complied with those there is no *requirement* for you to upgrade.
Also note that the regulations in question don't have the force of law
in domestic dwellings, though they are "best practice".

On the other hand, as other people have suggested, RCD protection is a
good idea and worth having from a life-saving point of view. Whether you
take the view that it's worthwhile getting this company in and find that
they also tell you you need a lot more work doing (bonding, earthing are
often problems) or whether you take the view that so long as you
remember to use an RCD plug whenever you mow the lawn is for you to say.

Were they a small local firm or a large national one? Or was it one of
the "free surveys" a lot of "Electricity Boards" are starting to offer?

Hwyl!

Martin.

--
Martin Angove (it's Cornish for "Smith") - ARM/Digital SA110 RPC
See the Aber Valley -- http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/abervalley.html
.... Apple: "I know! Let's call it the Raincoat."

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 08:08:59 +0100, Andrew McKay
wrote:

Consumer units aren't so expensive, sales people aren't going to make
their targets by selling individual consumer units, so there has to be
some other value-added sale to this.

I suspect the price quoted would make it a very profitable
enterprise.

On a separate note entirely, having lived in houses which had no
consumer unit with RCD protection and houses that do, I'd be inclined
to want to change to RCD protection regardless.

When I built this house I specifically excluded RCD protection in the
Consumer Unit. It contributes little in the way of overall safety.
Each socket used for outdoor jobs or in the garage is individually
RCD protected.

They can be life savers, and also prevent fires from starting up.

The can also be killers if fitted to lighting circuits. They don't
usually contribute much to fire prevention as the most usual causes
of electrical fires (and true electrical fires are relatively rare)
are simply overloaded circuits which they won't trip on.

You can't put a price on these things.

Yes you can - everything you do in life is a risk and you make
economic decisions with risk consequences every day. In the case of
RCD's it isn't a simple "these are good things to be had at any
price". They have advantages and disadvantages. Their benefits are
quite limited and installed on the incorrect circuits they increase
risk of harm significantly. If a Consumer Unit is being replaced
then replacing it with a split one with only a few circuits protected
by an RCD makes sense. Replacing a Consumer unit purely to achieve
this would probably be a waste of money. Putting in a single RCD
covering all circuits would be folly. Using an RCD on DIY tools and
devices used outside is a very wise move :-).

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/

In article ,
Gnube wrote:

Why would one not just get on with it and RCD the hell out of
everything at the source in one go? (he /perhaps/ naively asked!)

Fire downstairs melts eltrical insulation and causes an earth fault.
Family upstairs plunged into darkness as the lighting circuit is
tripped out...few extra seconds collecting the kids could make a lot
of difference.

Or, RCD on consumer unit trips on the day that you leave for 3 weeks
holiday - just as you shut the door. You return to a very defrosted
rather unpleasant freezer...

Opposite - it trips mid winter while you are away for a bit. Lack of
heating causes burst pipes and floods the place...

I'm sure other more experienced bods on here can come up with better
solutions.

From what's been said, they do a lot of good, and you can't put a
price on the safety they offer, why _not_ just go for it then?

Just a couple of ideas. I can't really talk - my whole house is currently
on one RCD at the CU and so suffers from both of the above problems.

Darren

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 16:55:33 +0100, Gnube
wrote:

Why would one not just get on with it and RCD the hell out of
everything at the source in one go? (he /perhaps/ naively asked!)

From what's been said, they do a lot of good, and you can't put a
price on the safety they offer, why _not_ just go for it then?

Because used in this way they _decrease_ safety quite considerably.

The number of people killed or severely injured by electrocution in
domestic accidents the UK each year is very small (figures are Home
Office ones for 1999). Even if you include accidents which are not
electrocution but attributable to it (such as falling off a ladder
after touching a live cable) the numbers involved in domestic
accidents are still small, about 25 deaths and 2000 injuries of all
severities (compare this with 70 deaths and 40,000 injuries caused by
DIY!). Those figures have not reduced since whole house RCD's
started to be used.

The total number of people killed in accidents in the home each year
is about 4,000, of this roughly half are due to falls and about 1,000
due to falls down stairs.

The number of people killed or injured in house fires is also
depressingly large, many times greater than those killed by
electrocution. Typically 500 people die and 18,000 are seriously
injured each year by fire in the home. Of these deaths about 20 are
attributable to electrical fires some of which an RCD might have
prevented. The remainder are caused by non-electrical ignition.

Of the 4,000 people killed in both falls and fires each year there is
no easily available breakdown of contributory factors. However some
police and fire reports do give further information. Of these I have
seen only a very small number from one area, however within these
there were a significant minority, probably about 10-20 which
mentioned that lights were out and could not be turned back on from
the light switch when the emergency services arrived. Only one or
two of these, usually fire service investigation reports,
specifically mention RCD's having tripped. Nonetheless it is
reasonable to infer even from this imperfect data that the number of
people killed in falls and fires in which tripped RCD's were the
cause or a major contributory factor is significantly higher than the
number of people protected by them _in the home_. In the garden or
garage is quite another matter.

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/

In message ,
(dmc) wrote:

In article ,
Gnube wrote:

Why would one not just get on with it and RCD the hell out of
everything at the source in one go? (he /perhaps/ naively asked!)

Fire downstairs melts eltrical insulation and causes an earth fault.
Family upstairs plunged into darkness as the lighting circuit is
tripped out...few extra seconds collecting the kids could make a lot
of difference.

Or, RCD on consumer unit trips on the day that you leave for 3 weeks
holiday - just as you shut the door. You return to a very defrosted
rather unpleasant freezer...

Opposite - it trips mid winter while you are away for a bit. Lack of
heating causes burst pipes and floods the place...

I'm sure other more experienced bods on here can come up with better
solutions.

From what's been said, they do a lot of good, and you can't put a
price on the safety they offer, why _not_ just go for it then?

Just a couple of ideas. I can't really talk - my whole house is currently
on one RCD at the CU and so suffers from both of the above problems.


One trusts you've not had a fire :-)

This is why whole-installation RCDs are no longer recommended.
"Discrimination" is the name of the game and the ultimate is to have as
many RCDs as you do outlets by using sockets with inbuilt RCDs.
Very expensive and probably completely unneccessary. Slightly
less expensive is to protect individual circuits by using combined
RCD/MCBs.

A common (and much cheaper) compromise is to use a "split" board and
leave the lights unprotected while RCD protecting sockets and the like.
If the RCD trips, all sockets will go off, but the lights won't. People
with earth rods may also have a slower-acting higher-trip-current RCD on
the whole installation such that lights are also protected.

If you are worried about the fridge and freezer then the obvious thing
to do is to put them on the unprotected side of a split CU, but if you
run them from simple wall sockets you are probably breaking the letter
of the regulation which states that all sockets "which may reasonably be
expected to supply portable equipment for use outdoors" should have RCDs
fitted; if the fridge socket is the closest to the back door, someone
*may* use that for the lawnmower. Answers in this instance involve the
use of fused connection units (i.e. hardwire the fridge in without a
plug), unusually-shaped plugs, and making sure the fridge socket has RCD
protection completely separate to that on other sockets.

Hwyl!

M.

--
Martin Angove (it's Cornish for "Smith") - ARM/Digital SA110 RPC
See the Aber Valley -- http://www.tridwr.demon.co.uk/abervalley.html
.... Thesaurus: ancient reptile with an excellent vocabulary.

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 18:46:19 +0100, Peter Parry
wrote:

[snipped rest of interesting info]

specifically mention RCD's having tripped. Nonetheless it is
reasonable to infer even from this imperfect data that the number of
people killed in falls and fires in which tripped RCD's were the
cause or a major contributory factor is significantly higher than the
number of people protected by them _in the home_. In the garden or
garage is quite another matter.

Sure makes you wonder if we should be looking into better ways of
doing a lot of basic things like lighting etc. Wouldn't solve it on
it's own I guess, but surely we can do better than this suggests?!


Take Care,
Gnube

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 23:33:26 +0100, Gnube
wrote:

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003 18:46:19 +0100, Peter Parry
wrote:


Sure makes you wonder if we should be looking into better ways of
doing a lot of basic things like lighting etc. Wouldn't solve it on
it's own I guess, but surely we can do better than this suggests?!

The problem is that risk management (there is no such thing as risk
elimination) is badly understood and can only be applied when you
look at the total situation. This approach does not suit
organisations who like to compartmentalise things or whose expertise
is in a narrow area.

"Safety" has also been made into a quasi religion, so questioning
something called a "safety measure", no matter how daft it might be,
is treated almost as sacrilege. A prime example of safety mania was
the over-reaction to the Potters Bar rail crash which caused more
casualties than it saved.

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/

Peter Parry wrote:
[ why not whole-house RCDs? ]
[ ... ] it is reasonable to infer even from this imperfect
data that the number of people killed in falls and fires in
which tripped RCD's were the cause or a major contributory
factor is significantly higher than the number of people
protected by them _in the home_. In the garden or garage is
quite another matter.

But a whole-house RCD would protect people in the garage and
garden, wouldn't it? Should the figures for people "saved"
by their whole-house RCD when drawing current in the house,
garden, garage or wherever be set against the ones "killed"
by their RCD tripping? If not, why not?


__________________________________________________ ______________
Sent via the PAXemail system at paxemail.com

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:02:02 +0100, Peter Parry
wrote:

A prime example of safety mania was
the over-reaction to the Potters Bar rail crash which caused more
casualties than it saved.

I must have missed the press reports of the over reaction and the
casualties it caused.

I was a bit shocked by that one as I was brung up in PB; considering
the countless times I've stood where it landed, made me hold and cold
somewhat.

Take Care,
Gnube

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:44:18 +0100, Gnube
wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 11:02:02 +0100, Peter Parry
wrote:

A prime example of safety mania was
the over-reaction to the Potters Bar rail crash which caused more
casualties than it saved.

I must have missed the press reports of the over reaction and the
casualties it caused.

Precisely my point :-). Yesterday nearly twice as many people died
in a single accident on the M56. I don't notice the motorway network
being shut down. The extraordinary limitation on rail services and
the time it took to lift them after what was a fairly straightforward
event forced many users on to far more dangerous roads.


--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/

Peter Parry wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2003 06:06:09 -0400, "jerrybuilt "
] wrote:



But a whole-house RCD would protect people in the garage and
garden, wouldn't it? Should the figures for people "saved"
by their whole-house RCD when drawing current in the house,
garden, garage or wherever be set against the ones "killed"
by their RCD tripping?


Yes they should, however the number is small. Since the introduction
of RCDs the number of deaths and injuries due to electrocution has
not noticeably altered.

A few people each year managed to get electrocuted (mainly by cutting
lawn mower leads) and some of those died. Set against the number who
are killed in falls (many at night) and fires the probability is that
whole house RCD's are a bad thing.





I think, Peter, that the best of both worlds is a large whole house RCD,
and then separate one(s) for where a fast acting safety switch is really
indicated.

All my irritating tripping problems have gione since I stuffed in that
100mA RCD, and would 100mA be enough to kill me? Possibly, but its
better that 1A!!!

On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 11:18:43 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:



I think, Peter, that the best of both worlds is a large whole house RCD,
and then separate one(s) for where a fast acting safety switch is really
indicated.

Having been to a number of fires where people have died in their
homes I want the lights to be on until the copper melts - not just
the insulation!

--
Peter Parry.
http://www.wpp.ltd.uk/