Upgrading old consumer board - off peak and basic questions

Hi guys

Looking after a bit of advice before I get an electrician (or two) round for some quotes. Just to confirm, I have no intention of doing this myself...

Current setup:

- Original Wylex board at some stage has had MCBs fitted. This covers the majority of the house.
- A new consumer unit was installed when a conservatory was added. Just has '2' trip switches on it.
- We have off peak electric for night storage heaters and an unvented HW tank. This is on its own timer to heat up overnight. The whole house switches to offpeak using a teleswitch and then the night storage heaters automatically come. We want to stick with off peak. This still have old school fuses on.

So.. what should I be asking for to 'upgrade'?

One new board that has all the above in? Is this possible?
Would you remove the newer board for the conservatory and just add this to the new board?
Does the off peak board for the night storage heaters need its own board or can they be wired in as part of a bigger one and still be switched using the tele switch?

Photos below.

thanks in advance

I would opt to replace all of the existing CU's, nice and tidy that way.

The ideal solution would be 1 CU, filled with RCBO's. With that arrangement, it could all be dealt with easily in a single board.

Otherwise an electrician could build up a board with 2x RCD's to protect the house MCB's, and RCD for the off-peak protecting the heater and hot water MCB's.

Depending on the arrangement, a contactor for the off peak may be fitted in the consumer unit.

That Wylex board is dangerous, if its going to be there for a while more, I would suggest cutting out the front section of the cover, and fitting it over the MCB's.

I would opt to replace all of the existing CU's, nice and tidy that way.

The ideal solution would be 1 CU, filled with RCBO's. With that arrangement, it could all be dealt with easily in a single board.

Otherwise an electrician could build up a board with 2x RCD's to protect the house MCB's, and RCD for the off-peak protecting the heater and hot water MCB's.

Depending on the arrangement, a contactor for the off peak may be fitted in the consumer unit.

That Wylex board is dangerous, if its going to be there for a while more, I would suggest cutting out the front section of the cover, and fitting it over the MCB's.

Hi, thanks for the quick response, can you please expand further on:

'Otherwise an electrician could build up a board with 2x RCD's to protect the house MCB's, and RCD for the off-peak protecting the heater and hot water MCB's'

Am a bit confused by that?! Does that mean keep the existing board and protect that?

Is the Wylex board dangerous because there is a gap? Not really thought of that before...

I have same Wylex type board in my house and would not consider it as dangerous. But the modern consumer unit can contain all sorts of devices as well as the MCB. Timers, relays, transformers for door bell can all be included into a modern unit. However as to if you would want to is another question.

The consumer units can be 18 way but 10 way is more readily available the one shown is a split board where one would fit 9 RCBO's and 9 MCB's or use the slots for other devices.

But to fit a RCBO the consumer unit needs to be taller Dimensions (mm)
W:475 x H:232 x D:110 for the one shown so not sure if it would fit in that space.

There's plenty more modern consumer units with clip in blanks that can be flicked out with finger nails that are much more dangerous than the small gap around a wylex standard board's protective devices.

You can get boards which manage both peak and off peak, however with the limited height available and the space between the boards limiting the amount of cable slack available I'd stick to two separate boards of a reputable make (Wylex, MK, Hager, Scheinder). Hager are my favourite as they're pretty well priced and haven't chanted their breaker mounting design in like forever.

I would leave the off-peak as it is. Its just fine, you aren't going to improve the look of all of that spaghetti.
Normally you would never need to touch the fuses in there. If you were to change it, then you would need to comply with 17th edition which would mean RCD protection. What would be the point of doing that?

Consolidate the other two boards into a new dual RCD consumer unit (or go for all RCBOs, if you have deeper pockets.

mfarrow said:

There's plenty more modern consumer units with clip in blanks that can be flicked out with finger nails that are much more dangerous than the small gap around a wylex standard board's protective devices.

You can get boards which manage both peak and off peak, however with the limited height available and the space between the boards limiting the amount of cable slack available I'd stick to two separate boards of a reputable make (Wylex, MK, Hager, Scheinder). Hager are my favourite as they're pretty well priced and haven't chanted their breaker mounting design in like forever.

Click to expand...

I would agree with this we all would like new looking system but in real terms the only advantage of an upgrade is RCD protection.

For my mother (89) and father-in-law (87) there is little need to upgrade neither are likely to drill their walls or do daft tricks like remove a slice of toast with a knife while toaster is switched on.

For my daughters and son (30's) with grand children around every reason why they should have RCD protection.

You need to consider if you need it. The main problem in not having RCD protection is without it a scheme member electrician would charge much more to add an extra socket as all new sockets need to be RCD protected.

There are other methods. For example in my mothers house the kitchen was re-furbished to allow her to use it with a wheel chair. So a sub consumer unit was fitted which just feeds the kitchen.

In some ways local RCD protection can be better than at the board. Sockets feeding for example the lawn mower with a built in RCD mean if it trips only the lawn mower stops working no need to reset all clocks and you are very aware of what caused the trip.

It is down to a risk assessment and that risk does change with the occupants of the house. My son became a radio ham at 14 years old and for me RCD protection was a must. My father-in-law still has no fixed RCD protection just a RCD plug on the lawn mower.

Taylortwocities said:

I would leave the off-peak as it is. Its just fine, you aren't going to improve the look of all of that spaghetti.
Normally you would never need to touch the fuses in there. If you were to change it, then you would need to comply with 17th edition which would mean RCD protection. What would be the point of doing that?

Consolidate the other two boards into a new dual RCD consumer unit (or go for all RCBOs, if you have deeper pockets.

Click to expand...

I would agree with TTC.

Kind Regards,

DS

Taylortwocities said:

I would leave the off-peak as it is. Its just fine ... If you were to change it, then you would need to comply with 17th edition which would mean RCD protection. What would be the point of doing that?

Click to expand...

Pragmatically, I agree - so I would probably give the same advice. However, in terms of "what would be the point?", I suppose it should be said that if (as is the case) compliance with current regulations would require 'improvements', then some clever people clearly do believe that there would be 'some point'.

Kind Regards, John

ericmark said:

mfarrow said:

There's plenty more modern consumer units with clip in blanks that can be flicked out with finger nails that are much more dangerous than the small gap around a wylex standard board's protective devices.

You can get boards which manage both peak and off peak, however with the limited height available and the space between the boards limiting the amount of cable slack available I'd stick to two separate boards of a reputable make (Wylex, MK, Hager, Scheinder). Hager are my favourite as they're pretty well priced and haven't chanted their breaker mounting design in like forever.

Click to expand...

I would agree with this we all would like new looking system but in real terms the only advantage of an upgrade is RCD protection.

For my mother (89) and father-in-law (87) there is little need to upgrade neither are likely to drill their walls or do daft tricks like remove a slice of toast with a knife while toaster is switched on.

Click to expand...

Yes, but their house is no more immune to insulation resistance deteriorating, or a pipe or similar rubbing a cable gradually over many years, until 1 day it makes the pipe live, and the bonding could possibly have failed.

I find it hard to argue that RCD protection is not a good idea.

phatboy said:

I find it hard to argue that RCD protection is not a good idea.

Click to expand...

In qualitative terms it is, indeed, hard to argue. In fact, on that basis it's probably impossible to argue since I do not doubt that an RCD has, at least once (probably many times) operated in response to a fault that has not caused (in a TN installation) an OPD to operate. The concept of a device which operates in response to a very much lesser L-E fault than does an OPD has got to be intuitively attractive (preferable?). However, whether or not that has really happened often enough to justify (in terms of an objective {'impassionate'} cost-benefit analysis) the cost of very large-scale installation of RCDs, I have no idea.

What I'm far more sceptical about is the belief, sometimes assertion, that RCDs have saved, or could save, "lots of lives". For a start, there are so few UK deaths due to electrocution (a good few of which probably could not have been prevented by an RCD, anyway) that nothing could 'save lots of lives', even if all avoidable-if-RCD-present ones were totally eliminated. The impact on 'serious injuries' is far more difficult to assess, due to the paucity (near absence) of useful statistics.

When RCDs do apparently "save lives", it's most likely to be due to an RCD having cleared a fault before anyone had a chance to suffer a shock as a result - but (in a TN installation) and OPD may well have done the same - no one cannot be sure that the presence of an RCD has made any difference. The most obvious case in which RCDs could save lives is when people experience shocks (usually due to doing silly things) which an OPD would not have prevented, the RCD operating as a result of current passing through the person. If that is happening on a significant scale, we ought to hear about cases of people experiencing shocks which have caused RCDs to operate, but very few people seem to have known or heard of that happening - it obviously must happen at least occasionally, but it is probably unlikely to get 'publicised', let alone 'reported' (who to?!).

Kind Regards, John

JohnW2 said:

Taylortwocities said:

I would leave the off-peak as it is. Its just fine ... If you were to change it, then you would need to comply with 17th edition which would mean RCD protection. What would be the point of doing that?

Click to expand...

Pragmatically, I agree - so I would probably give the same advice. However, in terms of "what would be the point?", I suppose it should be said that if (as is the case) compliance with current regulations would require 'improvements', then some clever people clearly do believe that there would be 'some point'.

Kind Regards, John

Click to expand...

RCD protection on off peak boards always get omitted during consumer unit changes.

But to bring it up to date, if you want it to current standards, you would provide RCD protection for the off peak. Not that anyone would usually be drilling holes at night, but it would need doing on new work, if the cables were buried in the wall at less than 50 mm.

Though pointless, I would be tempted to fit a new off peak board with an RCD main incomer (but only in my house, if it was anyone else's money I would suggest because it is 'existing' to leave it alone unless they want to spend money).

So why on earth would you fit it in your house?

Personally I'm either no RCD protection for S/Heaters or RCBO's.

I wouldn't want to wake up to a cold house because 1 heater had taken out the RCD for all heaters (however rare! this would be)

Does anyone with S/Heaters have a problem this time of year with elements absorbing water and tripping an RCD ?

AndyPRK said:

So why on earth would you fit it in your house?

Click to expand...

Because in my house I would want all the consumer units to match, and be up to current regs, if I was re-newing some of it.

For the extra money it would cost me, I would want it spot on.