Fuse Boards & Consumer Units

Consumer unit replacement and repair can be carried out quickly and with minimal disruption to your home or business.

The current IEE wiring regulations state that all circuits that feed sockets, mobile equipment outdoors, all bathroom electrics and all cables buried in walls must have RCD protection. Most if not all cabling in this country is run in walls so therefore all circuits now need to have RCD protection, older fuse boards and consumer units do not have RCD protection. Any fuse boards or consumer units that do not have RCD protection should be upgraded to modern RCD protected consumer units to ensure the installation complies with current regulations.

RCDs are the best protection we have to protect us from potentially bad or fatal injuries due to electric shocks, they are designed to protect us from electric shocks form faulty circuit equipment/appliances or wiring.

What is an RCD?
RCD stands for Residual current device, this is a safety device that protects against earth faults that could lead to risk of electric shock. It detects the integrity of a circuit rather than detecting overload. If there was a fault with an appliance, water ingress or overheating somewhere in the electrical installation or a damaged cable electrical current would flow where it shouldn’t and could therefore cause an electric shock, if a fault like this were to occur the RCD would automatically trip in milliseconds and would not reset until the fault has been rectified to protect us from the risk of an electric shock. Whereas an MCB (miniature circuit breaker) only works on overload so wouldn’t trip if one of the faults mentioned above were to occur, leaving you vulnerable to an electric shock and in danger.

Replacing your consumer unit provides protection and safety in your home for you and your family. If you ever have significant electrical work carried out at your home such as a new circuit you have 2 options:

• Upgrade your whole consumer unit to accommodate the new circuit and all the existing circuits
• Changing socket and switch faceplates
• Install a separate small consumer unit to ensure the new circuit installed has RCD protection to comply with current regulations