upgrade to a dual RCD board (volex)

[ericmark]

The whole question of RCD protection with any RCD is not really clear,

only the new work must meet current requirements and there is no obligation to upgrade the existing installation unless the new work would adversely affect the safety of the existing installation, or the state of the existing installation was such that the new work could not be operated safely, or where there is a requirement to upgrade imposed by the energy efficiency requirements of the Building Regulations.

so it seems it is not required, however if we look at deaths like Emma Shaw it is clear had a RCD been fitted it would have saved her life, and she was not doing anything which a tenant should not have done.

Yes the death was not arbitrated to lack of RCD, there was a whole list of things which had gone wrong, however if a RCD was not fitted and an accident like that happened we would not forgive ourselves for not fitting one, and this is what my father-in-law said to me about 1992 when my son got interested in amateur radio, and I fitted RCD's to the house then.

So I have had RCD protection for over 25 years. So can't really say some one else should not fit it, in this house a roof leaked, and the RCD tripped and on inspection I found the socket had part melted so the RCD may have stopped a fire.

However I tried to fit a RCD to parents house, clearly a problem it would not stop tripping, but I had a dad who dug in his heals and said I am not living in a building site, you can rewire when I am dead, which is what happened. I was very uneasy knowing there was a fault, but could not do anything until he died, when after my mother put an extension lead in a bucket of water as she thought it was on fire, I realised it must be done. Alzheimer's disease and poor eye sight caused the problem, but you don't really know the health of all occupants when you rent a house, so daft things can be done.

In real terms we should not need laws to force us to fit safety features.

 

[JohnW2]

... however if a RCD was not fitted and an accident like that happened we would not forgive ourselves for not fitting one, and this is what my father-in-law said to me about 1992 when my son got interested in amateur radio, and I fitted RCD's to the house then.

[this is well off-topic!] ... Obviously well-intentioned, but probably not actually of any appreciable value.

In my mis-spent (and undoubtedly sometimes foolish) you, I experienced a good few electric shocks in the name of amateur radio (some involving voltages up to around 2kV), some of which were potentially lethal, but I don't think an RCD (if they had been even dreamed of at the time!) would have protected me at all - since my shocks were invariably from HT lines of PSUs which were isolated from 'the mains' by transformers.

If the hobby I had taken up had been 'home electrics', rather than amateur radio, that would have been a different story!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

[this is well off-topic!] ... Obviously well-intentioned, but probably not actually of any appreciable value.

In my mis-spent (and undoubtedly sometimes foolish) you, I experienced a good few electric shocks in the name of amateur radio (some involving voltages up to around 2kV), some of which were potentially lethal, but I don't think an RCD (if they had been even dreamed of at the time!) would have protected me at all - since my shocks were invariably from HT lines of PSUs which were isolated from 'the mains' by transformers.

If the hobby I had taken up had been 'home electrics', rather than amateur radio, that would have been a different story!

Kind Regards, John

My son was a GW7 so no HF, and all the VHF sets were 12 volt and commercial as he was building power supplies for those 12 volt (13.8 volt) radios, yes could get RF burns, but biggest risk was from mains before it was transformed.

 

[JohnW2]

My son was a GW7 so no HF, and all the VHF sets were 12 volt and commercial as he was building power supplies for those 12 volt (13.8 volt) radios, yes could get RF burns, but biggest risk was from mains before it was transformed.

Fair enough. My history was also primarily VHF, but it was obviously a different era, probably a decade before I used semiconductors for anything other than audio (let alone in a transmitter). It was therefore almost invariably the HT supplies that I sometimes got shocks from, generally 250V-350V but, as I implied, occasionally up to 1,500V - 2,000V (primarily for 4CX250B high power output stages of VHF transmitters - when I was playing with meteor scatter and moonbounce).

RF burns are a different, and nastier matter. They can be very painful and more damaging (to the body) than DC or 50Hz ones. They rarely cause immediate heart problems (hence potential sudden death) but can (and do) 'cook' one's skin and organs (a la microwave ovens!). They are also quite easy to get because, intuitively one tends not think a lot about the potential danger when there are no 'wired voltages', in the normal sense, involved!

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

I went to a lovely lecture by Sir Richard Davies on the early days of radar. He recounted how in Orford Ness they were finding a load of dead seagulls, so they sent them for analysis, and it seems they were landing ready cooked, this was world war 2, so they thought can we build a death ray, so they did some experiments however it was found the rays spread out too fast, however it was from that research that we got the micro wave cooker.