I'm trying to guestimate how long ago the consumer unit at my
daughter's house was installed. It's a Crabtree Starbreaker (which if
course is a brand/model that has been around and changed a lot over
the years), it just has a 100A main switch and MCBs, no RCDs at all.

It's obviously been installed as an upgrade to an old installation.
Would it have to conform to current regulations at the time or could
the installer have got away with conforming to the original regs?

Anyway, when was protection of socket circuits with RCDs brought in?

--
Chris Green
·

On 11/10/2014 14:41, wrote:
I'm trying to guestimate how long ago the consumer unit at my
daughter's house was installed. It's a Crabtree Starbreaker (which if
course is a brand/model that has been around and changed a lot over
the years), it just has a 100A main switch and MCBs, no RCDs at all.

It's obviously been installed as an upgrade to an old installation.
Would it have to conform to current regulations at the time or could
the installer have got away with conforming to the original regs?

Anyway, when was protection of socket circuits with RCDs brought in?

IIUC the 15th edition (1981) introduced the concept of the "whole house"
RCD.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
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| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
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In article ,
John Rumm writes:
On 11/10/2014 14:41, wrote:
I'm trying to guestimate how long ago the consumer unit at my
daughter's house was installed. It's a Crabtree Starbreaker (which if
course is a brand/model that has been around and changed a lot over
the years), it just has a 100A main switch and MCBs, no RCDs at all.

It's obviously been installed as an upgrade to an old installation.
Would it have to conform to current regulations at the time or could

Yes.

the installer have got away with conforming to the original regs?

No, although not much to stop them getting away with it.

Anyway, when was protection of socket circuits with RCDs brought in?

IIUC the 15th edition (1981) introduced the concept of the "whole house"
RCD.

It wasn't really until 17th edition that you could no longer get away
without an RCD.

TT systems have always required an RCD or Voltage operated ELCB, at least
back to 14th Edition and probably earlier.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm writes:
On 11/10/2014 14:41, wrote:
I'm trying to guestimate how long ago the consumer unit at my
daughter's house was installed. It's a Crabtree Starbreaker (which if
course is a brand/model that has been around and changed a lot over
the years), it just has a 100A main switch and MCBs, no RCDs at all.

It's obviously been installed as an upgrade to an old installation.
Would it have to conform to current regulations at the time or could

Yes.

Is that because a replacement of CU is regarded as 'major'?


the installer have got away with conforming to the original regs?

No, although not much to stop them getting away with it.

Very true! :-)


Anyway, when was protection of socket circuits with RCDs brought in?

IIUC the 15th edition (1981) introduced the concept of the "whole house"
RCD.

It wasn't really until 17th edition that you could no longer get away
without an RCD.

TT systems have always required an RCD or Voltage operated ELCB, at least
back to 14th Edition and probably earlier.

Thanks Andrew, it's not TT, I think it's PME but I didn't look that
hard.

So it's *probably* pre 17th edition, which sems to be 2008 with 16th
edition being 2004. I hadn't realised they were that recent, so the
CU could well have been replace post 2000.

--
Chris Green
·

wrote in message ...
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm writes:
On 11/10/2014 14:41, wrote:


So it's *probably* pre 17th edition, which sems to be 2008 with 16th
edition being 2004. I hadn't realised they were that recent, so the
CU could well have been replace post 2000.


The 16th edition regs certainly required sockets that could be used for
outdoor portable equipment to have RCD protection.

No date sticker behind the MCBs?

--
Adam

In article ,
"ARW" writes:
wrote in message ...
Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,
John Rumm writes:
On 11/10/2014 14:41, wrote:


So it's *probably* pre 17th edition, which sems to be 2008 with 16th
edition being 2004. I hadn't realised they were that recent, so the
CU could well have been replace post 2000.

The 16th edition regs certainly required sockets that could be used for
outdoor portable equipment to have RCD protection.

Yes, but that was mostly not understood, and often not implemented.

No date sticker behind the MCBs?

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On Sun, 12 Oct 2014 00:13:42 +0100, wrote:

So it's *probably* pre 17th edition, which sems to be 2008 with 16th
edition being 2004. I hadn't realised they were that recent, so the
CU could well have been replace post 2000.

The 16th edition was published in 1991 and replaced the 15th edition from 1st
January 1993

16th Edition Amendment 1 was in 2002 with Amemdment 2 in 2004

--