I did, I went to the top, and in writing. As there were no witness, and I was uninjured, I was accused of making it up.
Replace circuit breaker with WIFI smart metering circuit breaker
- Thread starter Tony59
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I did, I went to the top, and in writing. As there were no witness, and I was uninjured, I was accused of making it up.
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Thanks for all of the helpful advice. I wanted to install the monitoring device just to conveniently monitor usage for an electric shower, following a large electricity bill. After reading the advice, I plan to leave the consumer unit alone and instead install a monitoring device on the cable between the power switch and the shower. After passing the control switch outside the shower room, the cable goes through a loft space, so I can install the device in the loft. For now I am considering this Tuya device from eBay (see photo). It is intended for installation on a DIN rail, but I plan to put it in a separate enclosure box in the loft. I understand that the clamp should go around the live cable, so I will need to cut the outer insulation of the cable for the shower and pull out the live wire enough for the clamp to go around it. Separately I plan to power the Tuya monitoring device from a plug socket that I have in the loft. After that I will hopefully be able to monitor energy usage with an app.
You only need to place the CT, the pick up, around either the live or the neutral. Place it around both L and N, they will cancel each other out.
Probably the easiest place to fit it, would be at the consumer unit, CT inside, with the Tuya unit in a box next to the CU, but powered from a lighting circuit. Easier to fit without damaging the shower cable, easier to remove, should removal be necessary.
Pretty sure the original device is not actually an overcurrent breaker at all, theres certainly no indication of it being to 60898 or 60947-2, no breaking caapcity, no energy limiting class, no tripping curve, etc and it appears to have a 'soft' switch rather than any mechanical toggle, now while you do get some breakers that work based on electronics firing an actuator, this is normally in some of the larger MCCBs, not 1 mod MCBS.
Either the inclusion of the term breaker is a mistake in the description is a a mistake, or I beleive some places can refer to a switching action as a non-automatic circuit breaker.
While it could be installed downstream of existing protection, one might be suspicious of what the quality of construction and terminals is to be used on a high current circuit such as a shower, the second example using a CT is a much better idea, but don't start butchering the T/E in the roof space... follow @Harry Bloomfield s advice and put the CT on inside the CU, and mount the unit in a DIN enc. adj.
Either the inclusion of the term breaker is a mistake in the description is a a mistake, or I beleive some places can refer to a switching action as a non-automatic circuit breaker.
While it could be installed downstream of existing protection, one might be suspicious of what the quality of construction and terminals is to be used on a high current circuit such as a shower, the second example using a CT is a much better idea, but don't start butchering the T/E in the roof space... follow @Harry Bloomfield s advice and put the CT on inside the CU, and mount the unit in a DIN enc. adj.
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Agreed ref last two posts
Harry, by "the top" did you mean HSE or just the firm responsible? I reckon if I had been accused of making it up I would have gone for the jugular (HSE)
The top, as in the head of the company, who promptly referred it back down the line. I made representations to HSE, but they failed to follow it up.
Drat - definitely a candidate for correction of attitude via the poke `em in the eye with a pointy stick. It very quickly teaches folk not to do it again
It does seem that way - which might mean that you are almost as old as me
Yes, I again agree with all of that - except that, as I previously said, I still do suspect that if all the money spent on RCDs had been used for a different purpose, then far higher net number of lives might have been saved.
Yes, I've avoided complicating the discussion with this but, as most people here are aware, I theoretically (but see below **) have a TT system and am therefore 'reliant' on RCDs to provide fault protection. In my case, I have upfront 100 mA ones (it is a 3-phase supply, with separate RCDs for each phase) with about a dozen 30 mA RCDs (and a few RCBOs) protecting final circuits. I therefore do have some 'duplication', and it does not worry me too much that the upfront one is only 100 mA - whilst that is, as you say, not really enough for 'personal protection', I think that RCDs operating as a result of currents through human beings is an extremely rare event, the greatest potential advantage of having RCDs is that they can clear faults before anyone gets a shock, even when the magnitude' of the fault is far too low to be cleared by traditional MCB/fuse-mediated ADS.
In passing, in terms of fault protection in general (not 'personal protection') and your comment about duplication of RCDs ("to reduce the risks of 'stiction' "), 'we' seem happy to rely on single MCBs to provide fault protection via ADS, even though such devices are, in practice, effectively 'untestable'!
[ ** As many here know, although I have a "TT" installation, it seems to be enjoying, by virtue of a bonded metal water supply pipe, a neighbours TN-C-S earth, such that (with bonding connected) my Ze is usually around 0.3Ω. With things as they are, I therefore do not, electrically speaking, need RCDs to provide fault protection, but I cannot (should not!) rely on that, given that some phantom workers could appear in the middle of some night with a replacement length of plastic water pipe in their van
]Maybe - but, as I said, I have suffered so few (if any) incidents of equipment possibly having been damaged by supply spikes/surges over the past 50++ years that I am not convinced that an SPD would ever have been worthwhile for me!
Kind Regards, John
"It does seem that way - which might mean that you are almost as old as me"
68 in June John, I think some whippersnappers on here might be 50 or less.
We were brung up on £ s d making it 240 pennies to the pound and still used ha`pennies (half a penny).
In fact some shops priced in Guineas although they were not legal tender but a good ploy to mislead folk ref expense - hmm, nothing changes does it? LOL.
If you climbed a tree, fell out and broke yer leg then you were told "don`t come running to me!" it was your own fault, not everybody else's.
Folk driving cars used the indicators back then, in fact many still called them "Trafficators" they slung out on a big arm and flashed.
23 11 63 was not the day JFK was shot, it was the first screening of that man from Galifrey in his Blue Box.
No mobile phones. In fact many homes had no phones so you would run to the phone box (Red ones not Blue ones).
Teachers were never bullied by pupils. The teachers were the bullies, it was compulsory for teachers to be bullies.
68 in June John, I think some whippersnappers on here might be 50 or less.
We were brung up on £ s d making it 240 pennies to the pound and still used ha`pennies (half a penny).
In fact some shops priced in Guineas although they were not legal tender but a good ploy to mislead folk ref expense - hmm, nothing changes does it? LOL.
If you climbed a tree, fell out and broke yer leg then you were told "don`t come running to me!" it was your own fault, not everybody else's.
Folk driving cars used the indicators back then, in fact many still called them "Trafficators" they slung out on a big arm and flashed.
23 11 63 was not the day JFK was shot, it was the first screening of that man from Galifrey in his Blue Box.
No mobile phones. In fact many homes had no phones so you would run to the phone box (Red ones not Blue ones).
Teachers were never bullied by pupils. The teachers were the bullies, it was compulsory for teachers to be bullies.
Only sometimes - often as not, they needed a thump on the back of the B pillar to get them to pop out, and the early ones didn't flash.
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I don't think the trafficators that I remember did actually flash. (too slow)
The French ones used to wave up and down..
Roughly as I suspected, but you've got 5 or so years to go before you catch me up
Indeed - and not to mention pounds, ounces, pints, quarts, gallons etc. etc., let alone the likes of rods, poles perches and furlongs
Yep the State had then not yet employed Nanny in those days. Moving slightly on-topic, at a very early age I discovered how to unscrew the (unearthed) round brass covers from light switches
Indeed. My family's first car (a Morris 8 ) had those (although, as others have said, they didn't 'flash') - and, of course, many of those who then had driving licences (which could be, and were, renewed indefinitely thereafter) had, like my father ,never taken a driving test. Again, Nanny had not yet appeared.
Indeed. We were one of the first houses in our street to get a phone, so there was a constant flow of neighbours coming to use it!
Very much so. Were it today, most of my teachers would undoubtedly be in prison, not the least because of the 'physical assaults' on pupils/students that they regularly administered. One of them often threw a wooden 'blackboard duster' at pupils, not infrequently hitting their faces/heads - quite apart from the formal 'corporal punishment'. Very "non-PC" things about "foreigners" were very often muttered by our Headmaster at morning assembly, and those who went into the fifth form of my (Grammar) school (because they did not do well enough in their 'mocks' to do their O-Levels in the fourth form and then jump straight into the sixth form) were openly, and frequently, referred to by the Headmaster as "the scum of the earth'!
Going back to the technology side of it, in addition to the (previously 'unthinkable') communications facilities that now exist, whenever I see my offspring reaching for their phone, tablet or laptop to 'interrogate Mr Google' (or whoever) I have to remind them of the amazing change in the availability of 'information' that 'the Internet' has brought to us. In my adolescence, if I wanted to 'find out something', I had to engage in a 30 minute walk to the local 'reference library'. They rarely had what I actually wanted, but were very helpful and usually could 'get it for me' - but that often took a week or two (and required a second 60-minute round trip to the library)! Today, the same exercise obviously only takes 'seconds'.
Times have changed (in some cases for the good) - but that's more than enough from me for now!
Kind Regards, John
Our first was a Morris Oxford, like a larger version of the Minor 1000. He did consider a Vanguard.
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