half of the board only is RDC protected - any reason ?

[purpledog]

Hi all,

I've just realised that only half of my consumer unit is RDC protected, does anybody knows why that might be the case ? Cheap savings or something else ?

Note that most of the unprotected fuses are used for lights.

Thanks,
Frank

 

[sparkymartin]

It was commonplace for only some circuits to be RCD protected until fairly recently.

It is not necessarily something to worry about.

If you do want full RCD protection then it may be possible to replace those non-RCD circuits with RCBO's (depending on the number of circuits this is often cheaper than a full consumer unit change. It would be worth checkng that there is an earth on the lighting circuits, if not then I would recommend only having class 2 light fittings.

 

[wingcoax]

As sparkymartin says,it was normal to have what is called a Split load board until recently. Light were put on the unprotected side because when a bulb blew it was quite common for the main rcd to trip all the power.

 

[roberta1000]

And additionally if it's like some I've seen it's because the installer found tripping problems on some of the circuits which he couldn't be bothered sorting out!