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Hi all, Has anyone bought, fitted or have experience of the cheap vertical column rads from the likes of Ebay and Amazon? I'm looking into buying a pair for our living room, branded ones from elsewhere seem to be coming in around £200-£250 each as opposed to as little as £80 for an Ebay job...

Have you looked into LPG? We just have a bog standard combi boiler (jetted/set up as required to run on LPG)

Switch mode power supplies have some kind of fuse on the input (mains / high voltage side) but AFAIK they don't on the output as they're protected against overload and short circuit electronically. Could be wrong on that, but I don't recall seeing fuses on the outputs side of the few SMPS's...

By mains adapter, I assume you mean a typical modern switch mode power supply with DC output e.g a phone or laptop charger. Generally speaking, the output should be able to withstand being shorted without causing damage to the power supply or creating a fire hazard. Not that I'd recommend doing...

Oh dear it's this age-old question! Please just get an electrician, whatever it cost's it'll be worth it

I wandered away from your question somewhat and went on a bit of a ramble. It happens.

How many posts do we see on DIY forums, both here and elsewhere, asking why their RCD is tripping and they don't know which circuit is causing it? IMHO If you're replacing a consumer unit in 2019, RCBOs really should be the only option to consider & RCBO's should have been made mandatory in the...

What type of lighting do you currently have exactly and are you happy with the light levels? 'The best watts' is not something we can answer without knowing a fair bit more information

As said above an (actual) 18w or 24w LED lamp is going to be ridiculously bright! However an "18w" or "24w" LED lamp for a fiver from the likes of eBay probably won't be anywhere near that wattage and will be of questionable quality. Stick to a trusted brand like Philips or Osram. At a guess...

Fully populated RCBO boards are becoming quite common now-a-days. Any decent wholesaler will have stock on the shelf or will be able to get one next day

This is notifiable work & circuits will need testing etc for the work to be completed safely. You've already admitted there's a problem somewhere. I'd recommend just getting an electrician in the first place to do everything including buying the board, yes they'll add a bit of mark-up to the...

John, I was explaining that it was "my bad" as I got the word 'nominal' confused. I meant our UK voltage medial or average is 240 which appears to be what others were saying anyway. I am guilty of scan reading and misinterpreting comments sometimes. Anyway I hope this clears things up.

Nominal: being such in name only; so-called; putative Medial: pertaining to a mean or average; average Yes, well, ahem... :whistle:

You are correct, however if I ever measured much less than 230v in a UK property I'd be thinking they may have a line fault or transformer issue. The fact is our nominal voltage is still 240, whatever the re-written wording is in regs books to comply with our EU neighbours.

Replacement 2D tubes are cheap as chips. Lamp holders going brittle usually only happens when they've been left with a tube in for a very long time that's had a starter stuck closed, meaning the cathodes have been glowing orange hot for hundreds of hours, baking the plastic

This is simply inaccurate. The LED tube will see full voltage (actually 240v, 230v is a myth). The problem is the ballast can start to resonate so draws power itself. LED lumens-per-watt are generally higher than what you've stated and and fluorescent is generally lower. ???

The cheap nasty ballast in that fitting will likely fail before a tube does

All fluorescent lighting? What about HF, which is by far the best type of lighting to avoid this 'rotating power tools appear to be stationary' phenomenon As said above, LED's nearly always flicker

Do you do jet washing in there?! It's unlikely you'll need anything more than IP20 in a kitchen! Personally I'd just get some new tubes and electronic starters for the existing fitting. Get Philips or Osram branded tubes & LEL multipulse starters (sold through eBay) and then forget about that...

There's a large list of things it could be, not necessarily just something plugged in. Usual suspects would be an outside light that's fed off that circuit and is suffering moisture ingress, or cables damaged by mice or similar.