RCDs

Leaving aside your first assumption which I don't think is true (but someone will say), a whole house RCD may well be 100mA. Individual use circuits that you describe should be protected by a 30mA RCD (more sensitive to faults by a factor of 3), in that case one should still be used.

No. It depends to some extent on when the house was built and/or electricity supply installed. Overhead mains were used *long* before RCDs were invented - and I suspect that lots of houses still have overhead supplies without RCDs.

Even if you do have an RCD, a whole house unit may well have a higher threshold current needed to trip it than one intended for use with garden tools etc.

W-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-lll.

the 100/30 mA trip issue has already been raised.

Are you happy for the whole house to lose power because of your hedge trimmer? We have an overhead/PME supply with a master RCD and I still use 30mA RCDs for external supplies.

If its 30mA you are street legal.However many including myself find that this gives a lot of nusiance tripping,and I ahve uorated to 100mA on teh whole board, which dies trip if something really is wrong, but not otherwise. That means I really OUGHT to get around to putting 30mA trips on the circuits that feed outside...

Does it have a test button? Is there a 'mA/milliamp' rating printed on it?

cheers, Pete.

There are 2 RCDs, one for the main house (probably rewired 40 years ago) and one for the annexe (built about 15 years ago).

The RCD for the main house is only marked: 500V and 60A - made by Crabtree. I can see no mention of its rating. Interestingly, it has two earth wires wired into at the output end.

The RCD for the annexe is marked: 240V and 63A. It is also marked with BS 4293 and n0.03A (is this a 30mA rating?)

Keith

Thats an ELCB, not an RCD. Which means you would gain a safety benefit by using an RCD on outdoor tools.

NT

Worth noting that cascaded RCDs don't usually discriminate - so in the event of a fault one or both will trip - and it is as likely that the upstream one will go before the downstream one. The solution is a upstream RCD with a time delay.

Does it look like:

Yes, this is a modern RCD with a 30mA rating.

The main wiki article on RCDs might be worth a read for some background on the implications of your current setup.

ELCB's are condemned now, since they can be rendered inoperable by parallel earth paths. They should be replaced with an RCD unit.

one in the photo at:

Keith

Err, you misunderstand what they do. They are designed to work with parallel earth paths. If you have enough, they cease operating because you have a good enough earth not to need them.

Not in my view, although some electricians might not do it.

A 40 year old installation, unless it's been badly hacked about, shouldn't be in a dangerous condition, even though not to today's standards. Even if you want to bring it up to todays standards, you can probably retain most of the existing cabling.

There is nothing stopping you updating part of the installation. The only thing that really ought to be brought up to modern spec if not present, is the main equipotential bonds with the water and other service pipes.

You have a few options for upgrading, it depends a bit on what you want to achieve and how far you want to go.

The simplest option is to go for the "whole house" RCD sat in a separate enclosure, and basically replacing the ELCB that you have now. This is a deprecated way of doing things, since it gives no discrimination between faults - i.e. you lose all power on any trip. However it would add greatly to to shock protection and would cost under £40 for the bits.

A much better but relatively simple solution would be to replace the ELCB with a time delayed 100mA RCD, and then split the tails to add a second CU after the new RCD. This CU could have a standard 30mA RCD on its incomer. You would then move any power socket circuits to the new CU. Total cost would probably be under £130 in parts and would offer greatly enhanced protection.

Exactly - a common misunderstanding. Plenty of ELCBs are still in use and doing their job fine. What they do doesnt provide as many safety benfits of RCDs, but they do do the job theyre needed for effectively.

NT

the only 'but' to that its not uncommon for old installs to not wont work with an RCD due to minor issues that need to be hunted down and fixed. So if you go for an RCD, budget for further work.

However its just one more example of solving a problem that isnt worthwhile. The number of electrocution deaths per year is very small, and if youre going to spend =A350 and a day's work there are far bigger risks you could solve with that.

NT

This does presume they are installed in the way intended. Most I have seen are not alas...

It is also important to note they offer no protection from direct contact shocks.

That is another attraction of adding a separate CU so that you can select individual circuits to protect. It leave the option open to move one back to the old CU if required while hunting faults.

If the old install is tripping a 100mA RCD with leakage then it really ought to be fixed as a matter of some urgency anyway since it indicates that there is probably a serious insulation break down failure somewhere.

I don't agree with that as a general statement... you need to take into account the likely users of the installation, and the uses it will be put to.

Just because a shock does not actually kill you it does not mean that you escape unscathed. The RCD protected installation will in many cases reduce the severity of a range of injuries that can be caused by electric shock including burns, arc flash injury, and muscular spasm injury (and secondary injuries resulting from said spasms). Not to mention the pain and distress that shocks can cause.

The number of serious shocks resulting from (mis) using *appliances* is actually quite large - and it is here that 30mA (or lower) threshold RCD protection will make a big impact on prognosis for recovery from the shock.

Certainly, and this applies to the other causes of death & injury too. Death numbers are the one thing we can quantify and compare, so those are normally what are used for comparison.

If you look at the top killers, electrocution kills orders of magnitude fewer people than a goodly list of other things. I still say spending your pocket money changing an ELCB to an RCD will give little safety return compared to addressing other normal household issues.

A smoke alarm in every room would give way more benefit - look at the govt figures, 70,000 domestic fires a year, 400 annual deaths, and smoke alarms only picking up a percentage of these for various reasons. From Fire Statistics United Kingdom, 2001, ODPM:

"A smoke alarm was absent in the fire area in 59% of dwelling fires in 2001. These fires accounted for around 280 deaths and a further

Smoke alarms "failed to operate altogether in 8,100 cases (12%)"

There might be exceptions for unusual uses, but for most of us I dont think thats the prime issue

NT