"Consumer's Panel"

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Blueflash

Just watched Watchdog live - If you can't switch off your smoking tumble drier at the plug you should switch of at your "consumer's panel" says a senior london fire officer !

How to confuse the public :confused:


Dave
 
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DaveDraker said:
Just watched Watchdog live - If you can't switch off you're smoking tumble drier at the plug you should switch of at your "consumer's panel" says a senior london fire officer ! How to confuse the public :confused:
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Indeed. I fear that "senior london fire officers" have got quite a lot to answer for.

I'm still waiting for the first report of a DIYer (or maybe even electrician) being electrocuted when 'fiddling' in a CU because (thanks to the LFB) it was made of earthed metal.

Kind Regards, John
 
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JohnW2 said:
I'm still waiting for the first report of a DIYer (or maybe even electrician) being electrocuted when 'fiddling' in a CU because (thanks to the LFB) it was made of earthed metal.
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Except were that to happen it would not be "thanks to the LFB", it would be "thanks to the fiddler's incompetence".

Even if we had not had 421.1.201 we would still have metal CUs, so in the event of someone being electrocuted as you describe who would you choose to blame then? The person who specified the CU? The person who installed it? The maker?
 
If the amount of 'incompetent fiddling on CUs' remained the same as it always had been and a change in regulations resulted in a dramatic increase in the proportion of domestic CUs which were metal, then if there were a resultant increase in the number of electric shocks (and maybe some electrocutions), I know what/who I would blame for that increase.
 
You should see the (or rather, hear) the word confusion of the local police on one of these filmed for Tv real life shows you get on the cable/satelliite channels because they are cheap to film and fill up the schedules, when they found some no-good-er had removed a servcie cutout and attached jump leads to the incomming supply cable....

{think the link was posted here a while ago -someone will dig it up...}

As to the metal boards thing, it was for the wrong reasons, but largely I'm not sure the outcome was all too bad, I was sick and tired of flimsy plastic boards that are distorted by uneven walls, or even the incomming tails, now most brands, even the cheaper ones are solid enough, being made out of a reasonable thickness of sheet steel (I did expect a lot of really thin metal on boards, and while they may not be made out of recycled battleships like some old stuff is, this has not really happened, most are pretty good, although there might be the odd exception)

Yes you have to get proper tools out rather than just go at it with a sharp knife, but that is not really an issue, think its probably an annoyance to some 5 day wonders though who might not have HSS holesaws as standard kit, etc

Still there are cases when you need to use a plastic board, and sometimes happens on a domestic job, I had one last week where I fitted a hager vector IP65 unit on a garden wall as a weather proof distribution unit, to supply the feeds to the electric gates, greenhouse sockets & lighting and the floodlighting in the horse arena...I never checked the exact wording of the regulation in question, but I know its not an issue in the general spirit of whats intended by the regulation.
 
JohnW2 said:
If the amount of 'incompetent fiddling on CUs' remained the same as it always had been and a change in regulations resulted in a dramatic increase in the proportion of domestic CUs which were metal, then if there were a resultant increase in the number of electric shocks (and maybe some electrocutions), I know what/who I would blame for that increase.
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I repeat, if an incompetent fiddler was harmed by what happened to be a metal CU, who would you blame?

Please show approximate percentages of blame you would allocate to:

  1. The person who originally specified a metal CU
  2. The person who installed the metal CU
  3. The company which made the metal CU
  4. The incompetent fiddler
 
What is wrong in an emergency to switch power of by main switch on cu ? it could stop a lot more damage to property or life's.
Every body should now where the main cu switch is and how to use it, so in an emergency they can operate it correctly.

Also there main stopcock for water as well, many people don't know where they are or if the work?
 
Adam_151 said:
As to the metal boards thing, it was for the wrong reasons, but largely I'm not sure the outcome was all too bad, I was sick and tired of flimsy plastic boards that are distorted by uneven walls, or even the incomming tails, now most brands, even the cheaper ones are solid enough, being made out of a reasonable thickness of sheet steel (I did expect a lot of really thin metal on boards, and while they may not be made out of recycled battleships like some old stuff is, this has not really happened, most are pretty good, although there might be the odd exception)
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I agree that most plastic CUs were becoming very flimsy, and that it would have been desirable for them to become rigid but, in my opinion (for what its worth), that was about the only thing conceptually wrong with plastic ones for most domestic use, and it could have been addressed directly. Apart from anything else, as you say, although it does not seem to have happened to any great extent, it was perfectly possible (and we both expected!) that metal CUs were going to appear which were every bit as flimsy as the plastic ones which preceded them.

I think that many of us agree that the reasons for the change in regs were very questionable, for a whole host of reasons. In any event, even in terms of those (fire-related) reasons, the new requirement was not (in my opinion) even very well thought through. It is not the case of a CU which might suddenly burst into flames, but the components within it, yet the regulation does not include any requirement in relation to 'fire containment' - only that it be made out of 'non-combustible' material. A metal CU 'full of holes' (up to the limit of what IP requirements allow) would satisfy the new requirement.

If there were absolutely no downsides to a change to metal domestic CUs, there wouldn't be anything to talk about. However, I have mentioned at least one possible downside, albeit relating to a very rare set of circumstances (but how common are house fires due to flaming CUs?). More generally, a couple of current threads here remind us of the general undesirability of increasing the amount of touchable earthed metal around, particularly in the vicinity of other 'electrical stuff'.

However, it's not going to go away, so we just have to live with it. I suppose that the LFB can at least satisfy themselves that their efforts may result in less plastic waste getting into the oceans in the decades to come!

Kind Regards, John
 
We do not build our own houses, we have to select a ready built unit that is good enough for our requirements, so we have to accept some things which are in one way or another not quite what we want.

So my house as an example, the distribution units are in the integral garage, as is the water stop tap, not a consumer unit yet that is on my to do list. The garage door needs a key, so it would not be a fast option to open garage door and switch off at consumer unit.

There is an isolator above the worktop controlling the tumble drier and washing machine underneath them, but with a fire likely not safe to access.

The gas and electric supply and meter are accessible from outside the house, however I don't think removing the main incoming fuse is really a safe option, ionisation can be quite nasty.

I think the main point is we don't all live in little boxes, they are not all the same, I would hope early in a fire of a washing machine or tumble drier there would be some earth leakage which would switch off power.

However the machines are made to be used unattended, the old twin tub washing machine is far faster than the modern machine, simply no point in having something which is automatic then sitting there watching it. So there should be something to switch off the machine if over heated, I know there is a resettable button on the back of my tumble drier which will switch it off should the flap outside the house get stuck.

Working out what to do if a machine goes on fire is the wrong way to tattle the problem. It needs tattling at the root and do something to stop the fires in the first place.

Be it a simple thermal fuse, or ensuring when fitting MCB's the bus bar tag can't go wrong side of tag so causing a bad connection, the right thing is to stop the fire starting, not put it out once started.
 
baldykev said:
Every body should now where the main cu switch is and how to use it, so in an emergency they can operate it correctly.
Click to expand...

If the plastic CU is melting then molten plastic may have covered the main switch making it impossible to turn off

I do feel the London Fire Brigade are being given a bad deal over this. They are not the only fire brigade to have raised concerns about plastic consumer units but they seem to be the only brigade betting the "blame".

Of course the risk of electric shock is increased slightly if the consumer unit case is Earthed metal. ( Does it have to be Earthed ).

I am sure that the Fire Investigation Officers of the brigades advocating a change had thought this out and based on their decades of experience of investigating the causes of fires decided that inflamable consumer units should not be installed.

It after all the firemen and fire women who deal with the aftermath of fires and the FIOs determine the cause. How many installers have carried out forensic investigation of the burned out equipment they are replacing ?.
 
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