replacing a rewirable fuses with circuit breakers
- Thread starter broksonic
- Start date
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MCBs will generally be more susceptible to operating when a lamp goes than a fuse. Trying using good quality lamps that have built in fuses to try and reduce the problem.
To replace your fuses, a lot will depend on what make the fuse box is.
If it is Wylex, it's very easy to obtain and fit new replacement circuit breakers.
And also very expensive...plus you cant fit the cover on the front anymore with them fitted which looks tosh i think.
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despite the fact that the cover cannot be fitted after replacing wylex rewirables with mcbs, that could be sorted engineering wise and also the fact that the wylex old rewirables are becoming fewer and fewer in situ. I have thought that there could be a way of having plug in rcbo's onto the bus bar and a method of drilling through the body of the cover with a suitably sized and adequate grommet for 2 neutrals and fly lead to be connected from the rcbo terminal to the neutral bar and earth respectively with an enlarged screw in cover at the front???. It may suit extra sockets being installed or the odd lighting rearrangement where cables need to be chased??
by the way, wylex have outsourced their manufacturing and supply of their plug in mcbs, they have become expensive. If you have some old ones and are willing to sell untested ones, get on ebay
Or just swap out the out of date and completely inadequate old board for a new fit for purpose one.
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Surprised it has not been mentioned but the problem between MCB and Fuse is if the loop impedance is a little too high with a fuse it will just increase the disconnect time a bit. But with a MCB once the loop impedance exceeds the figure needed to operate the magnetic part of the trip the trip time suddenly increases. So unlike the humble fuse the loop impedance with a MCB is critical so one should not change them without first measuring the loop impedance.
Yes RF, it would be my preference to change the board, I just put it out there as an engineering possibility. If they cost £30 a pop for example, you could have a set up with say a 5 fuse set up for £150.00 with no real labour other than testing and inspection and have a full rcbo board, there would be some drilling and grommit fitting and crimping of neutrals, just a thought, thats all.
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