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Bit of a ponderer this one! I've got an elderly (90 year old) relative, who as of fairly recently lives by herself. Last week a faulty appliance caused the main switch RCD in her house to trip. She's pretty immobile, and has to shuffle around with the aid of a frame, and needless to say the main switch is at ceiling height and enclosed in a box with the meter and suppliers fuse. At first when the power went off she thought it was a general power cut, and it was only after the home carer had left for the day she realised it was just her house involved. Somehow (and I'm still mystified how!) she managed to drag a stepladder in from the garage on her walking frame and climb up to reset the RCD. The potential for disaster is obvious...
So I've started to have a think about the best course of action in case this happens again. The obvious thing to do is to rewire the house and drop the fuseboard and main switch down to an accessible height, but this just isn't affordable for her. So I'm left with two problems:
1) How to tell whether a power cut is a general one from the network, or caused by the main switch tripping in the house.
2) How to re-set the main switch if necessary.
For the first problem I'm thinking along the lines of a couple of indicator lamps on the wall under the fuseboard, one fed from each side of the main switch via a seperate fuse/RCD for each lamp. Both lights on = all good, both lights off = general power cut, one lamp only on = RCD tripped (or bulb blown - but ignore that for now!). This would obviously be a deviation from the regs in as much as the main switch would no longer isolate everything (one of the lamps would still be live) but with some warning notices and due to the proximity of the lamps to the switch I think I could justify that. Can anyone else see something I'm missing?
The second problem is a bit trickier. At the moment the best I can come up with is a pull cord from the RCD lever looped through the box and down to low level (ie pull the string to reset the switch). I had a quick play today and think it would just work at a push but is far from ideal, and is a bit of a lash-up even for me. Has anyone else got any ideas?
Thanks for any thoughts, and aoplogies for the long post...
So I've started to have a think about the best course of action in case this happens again. The obvious thing to do is to rewire the house and drop the fuseboard and main switch down to an accessible height, but this just isn't affordable for her. So I'm left with two problems:
1) How to tell whether a power cut is a general one from the network, or caused by the main switch tripping in the house.
2) How to re-set the main switch if necessary.
For the first problem I'm thinking along the lines of a couple of indicator lamps on the wall under the fuseboard, one fed from each side of the main switch via a seperate fuse/RCD for each lamp. Both lights on = all good, both lights off = general power cut, one lamp only on = RCD tripped (or bulb blown - but ignore that for now!). This would obviously be a deviation from the regs in as much as the main switch would no longer isolate everything (one of the lamps would still be live) but with some warning notices and due to the proximity of the lamps to the switch I think I could justify that. Can anyone else see something I'm missing?
The second problem is a bit trickier. At the moment the best I can come up with is a pull cord from the RCD lever looped through the box and down to low level (ie pull the string to reset the switch). I had a quick play today and think it would just work at a push but is far from ideal, and is a bit of a lash-up even for me. Has anyone else got any ideas?
Thanks for any thoughts, and aoplogies for the long post...