Consumer unit circuit ordering

That's true. A complete power failure is obvious in our house. Three separate UPS units start beeping wildly. This happened recently at 4 a.m.

Another good idea. One of our bathrooms is internal and it really shows that rooms with windows nearly always have at least some light making it round curtains at night.

This type seems ideal at only 45mm diameter so ought to be subtle:

Thanks for your thoughts Stephen. Will consider the RCBO route a bit further.

Yup - you have lots of appliances that have a reputation for being a source of high leakage currents (i.e. lots of things with metal clad, mineral insulated heating elements in damp environments)

No need to apologise. I was just a little surprised that someone had bothered to put the time and effort into doing a decent job.

It seems that John Rumm has answered your question for me:-)

There will always be a cumulative leakage to earth from class I appliances and the kitchen is the no one place to find them.

I was also thinking that that circuit powers your fridge/freezer. Ideally it would have it's own RCBO but as that is probably not possible in your case then go for the best alternative.

All the best with it.

I wonder how Brian Gaff manages to get down his stairs?

I can get down my stairs without falling over in a power cut.

It's worth noting that some CU manufacturers include the main switch as part of the number of ways.

I can too, but get disorientated if the light suddenly fails and I have to move from visual to tactile navigation.

Actually I walked into the bus stop this morning. Just because I can see something doesn't mean I can see how far away it is.

Owain

This newsgroup seems to have a lot of posters that seem to be obsessed with power cuts that occur just as they are about to use or half way down their stairs.

I reckon the best time for a power cut is when I'm on the stairs. The non-maintained light over the CU under the stairs leaks enough light to show me the way down - with the bonus that I don't have to try to remember what I was going up/down for :)

The point is also that it leaks enough light to both floors to make life a little easier.

It doesn't worry me, but to be fair, I suppose that an electrical fault leading to a fire could lead to power failure just when you need to see.

I have certainly had the lights trip just as I turned them on on a number of occassions. Once when I came in in the early hours of the morning, switched the hall/landing lights on and had a bulb blow and trip the breaker, so I was stood in darkness, with the alarm beeping and couldn't see the panel to turn it off! I couldn't do it by touch either, as it was a membrane keyboard and totally flat.

I was sure that the neighbours wouldn't appreciate a middle of the night alarm, but was luckily able to turn the kitchen light on and kick the door open a few times while I entered the code, as the hall/landing lights were on the upstairs circuit.

SteveW

The rest are out in the garden? <g>

Andy

My general suggestions are that fridge, freezer, central heating (frost protection), and life support systems (such as tropical fish) should not share an RCD with anything (or even each other). Outdoor circuits should not share an RCD with indoor circuits.

Personally, I only ever install RCBOs, never an RCD covering multiple circuits. They're cheap enough now (and I did this even when they were expensive).