in this video we're going to be doing a consumer unit replacement
using this fantastic new board from Lewden
so we've already done a benchtop review video of this consumer unit so look for the link either in
the description or in the eye at the top of the screen here but we thought that in this video
we'd put the board through its paces and see what it actually looks like during the installation
process so we're going to be taking this existing Hager consumer unit off the wall and replacing with the
new one now the reason that we're doing this is that at some point this wall that the consumer
unit is mounted on is going to be insulated battened off and overboarded to change this
room into a bit of an extension and so there's not enough slack on these cables as they're currently
installed going over the top of the truss there into the top of the board so what we're going
to do is we're going to install a new consumer unit which replaces this existing plastic one
with a metal one and we're going to re-route these cables underneath the truss so there's
plenty of slack for that to be pulled forward when this gets overboarded you can also see that the
cables here have not been very kindly treated they've not been installed incredibly well so
we'll be tidying those up as well so the old meter tails come up inside this trunking and i don't
think they're going to be long enough so i'm going to replace those and i'm going to replace them
with these flexible meter tails from doncaster cables because that's going to make life a little
bit easier but before i do anything of course i'm going to make sure that i've safely isolated
before i start stripping out the old tails and the old consumer unit
okay so that's the old consumer unit off the wall you can see here that i've marked up
all of the cables with the circuits that they're feeding fortunately i can read my own writing so
that'll be handy for me even if no one else can i've started prepping the loot and consumer
unit and i've taken out the two central knockouts at the top here because that's
where the cables will be dropping into and if you have a look at the grommet that's provided
with the luden consumer unit you can see it's got this square shape for the square shaped knockout
but what's uh just worth noting really is if you look at it on the back can you see you've got a
sort of a not symmetrical uh kind of bit that goes through the consume unit at the top here
so you can see you've only got a shallow bit there and a large bit there so when you pop it into the
board you want to make sure that you actually get that the right way around like so and then
when you push it home the back of that won't overhang now those square grommets have been
designed around popular trunking sizes and you also get this smaller size one available as well
just a top tip here for when it comes to bringing your cables through these it's a good idea rather
than putting a slit in here with a knife maybe just get a sharp pencil and then just pop a hole
through where you want to bring the cable and what that's going to do is it's going to allow
the grommet to form itself and mold itself around the cable and that's going to make sure that you
maintain the ip rating particularly on the top face of the board there so now it's just a matter
of getting it on the wall so i've marked up my pencil points drilling the holes into the wall
there I'm using brown raw plugs and some inch and a half tens with round-headed screws on these to
make sure that it holds the flat back panel of the board on the wall really nice and firmly so
we'll get that mounted ever so easy to work with went on first time no problem and then bringing in
the tails through one of the round knockouts that you'll find on every face of this consume unit
now i'm stripping this in two stages i've got my linesman suppliers you
might have seen there very briefly and also my knife will be interested to know
how you prefer to strip tails to use croppers or a knife or something else let us know in the
comments okay so as you can see i've installed my tails and strip those to the correct length and
what i'm going to do now is use this handy cable clamp just to hold these in place when they go in
so this is a super helpful bit of kit actually it's really pretty cool now it's worth mentioning
at this stage that this cable clamp is an additional accessory and is available as an
extra from luden so make sure that you add that to your list if you want one to go into your board
just put myself in a position where i can see what i'm doing and then get that into the terminal
and crank it up now what i'm going to do is i'm just going to do this up to a reasonable level of
tightness i'm not going to crank this right up now because hopefully you might be able to just about
see on there we've got 2.5 newton meters on there which is the level of torque that we need to apply
to that so I'm going to get my Torque screwdriver on that a little bit later in the video just to do
that up to the right level now that's the neutral in i'll get the line in there we go and again
not going to crank it i'm just going to nip it there we go and we'll get that up to 2.5 newton
meters a little bit later okay that's good so that cable clamp once that's tightened up
we'll just hold those really firmly in place as well and stop those from popping out under most
circumstances happy days nice little feature that i like that so i'm just going to start popping
the rcbos in here and just clipping those in to the consumer unit there so i'll start popping
those in now normally i like to have all of the devices and loads out while i bring the cables
in and that leaves me lots of space to make off the neutrals and the CPCs however because this is
purely rcbo board so the outgoing circuits are all rcbo fed i've got the neutral tails to dress in
and feed round and stuff so i'm going to install all of the rcbos first in this case and then
go and bring all the cables in to connect those up so just a couple of things that it's worth noting
about these rather lovely RCBOs from Lewden the first thing to note is the size of them so if i
bring in one of their older form rcbos you can see they're they're very very significant difference
in size so the new ones are a lot smaller than the old ones which is good because that means
there's more space to work in the consumer unit than we would have had before so that's
super handy another couple of good points about them all a types so these are a type rcbos not ac
so that means they're going to cope with up to six milliamps of pulse dc current going into
these which is good that means we're not worried about our household appliances back feeding dc
into the system and then blinding the rcbos and them not operating when we need them to which
is really good and another nice little bonus about them as well is that they are double pole
so that's going to disconnect both the line and the neutral out of here as well this has a number
of different advantages it makes the installation work safer because it means you can safely isolate
on a circuit by circuit basis disconnecting the line and the neutral from the same device it's
really helpful having that neutral disconnected for particularly tt systems where you may have a
floating voltage sitting on your neutral it could cause you problems and also for ev
charging circuits where the regulations require that both live conductors are disconnected it
also improves the ease and also the speed of your inspection and testing process because it means
that you don't have to disconnect the neutral lead during the insulation resistance test and the two
conductors the line and the neutral terminals are right by each other and that means that that's
going to speed up your overall installation and commissioning process again just worth noting when
we come to do our uh talking up of these terminals and towards the end of the video you can see that
the bottom ones are 2.5 newton meters and the top ones are 1.2 newton meters so those little
differences there will be worth taking out of when we start making our final connections into those
so i'm going to get the rest of these popped in uh bring the cables in get them fed in and then
start connecting everything up okay so that's all of the circuits connected now they're all in there
all of the testing for this video is being done off-camera because that's not really what this
one's all about however we do want to have a quick word about torque settings so you can see
along the bottom here that we've got specific torque settings that have been printed on here
by luden which is really good so these ones along the bottom are set to 2.5 newton meters
and also the surge protection devices also that one's a slightly difference it's got a range that
can be set between so it's 2 to 2.5 so i'm going to do that one at 2.5 at the top end and we've
also got you'll notice at the top we mentioned this earlier 1.2 newton meters at the top of the
rcbos instead of 2.5 so it's not just one setting does all now what i've done off camera is i've
been along and i've just slightly undone all of the terminals using just a normal screwdriver
because if someone had come along and sort of done these up even myself just done these
up and slightly over tighten them maybe set them to three newton meters without realizing
then it's possible that when i come along and now try and do it to the correct torque setting
the screwdriver is going to click out at 2.5 millimeters but they're actually too tight so
i like to just slacken the screws off a little bit and then go along and doing up to the right level
so we're going to set this uh torque screwdriver here to 2.5 newton meters so we'll just get that
set to the right value so on this one we go from 2.4 to 2.6 so 2.5 is between the two
and then we're going to put the bit holder in that's that in and this is a slotted posi number
two screwdriver head so we're going to use the slotted posi number two bit pop that in unlock
that and then we're ready to go and it's just a matter of going along the line and doing these up
to 2.5 newton meters so there we go that's all of those being done to the correct level i'd like to
just take this moment to tell you about our cpds that we produce in association with Lewden so we've
got these rcbos here we said earlier they're all type a's and we've actually produced a cpd on the
different types of rcd protection and what you can use them for and what you shouldn't use them for
and that's all freely available fully certificated fully accredited fully approved but all completely
free over on effix.co.uk in the Know how section as well as on the academy page of the Leden website
we're doing an mcb here we've also done one on the different types of mcb that are available
again where you apply them and why you don't including a little bit of myth busting in there
which is pretty helpful and we've also done one on surge protection devices as well so
please head over to efix.co.ukluden.com or click the link below and you'll be able to complete
those cpds and get yourself a certificate as well so i'll just do these last two terminals here
and there we go that's all good to go okay so i'm not going to bore you by showing you every single
connection being done to the correct torque setting but what i do want to talk about is
one really nice feature of this consumer unit and that's that every single screw head along the buzz
bar here the tops of the mcbs the rcbos the main switch and the earth bar and the neutral bar all
have the same screw head on them and that's that slotted puzzy number two and that means that you
don't have to keep on swapping your screwdriver head in and out of your torque screwdriver the only
ones that aren't that slotted pozi number two are the ones in the top of the surge protection
device purely based on engineering limitations i'm super proud of myself at this point because
i always always forget to put the terminal shields back on the number of consumer unit and
distribution board lids that i've taken off and put back on again simply because i've forgotten
to do that is innumerable so i'm glad to have got that done again just a couple of points to
sort of appreciate surge protection device here some manufacturers don't require mcb protection
some do in this case the mcb has been provided to give some local protection and isolation to
the surge protection device rather than relying on the service head fuse to provide this function
so just make sure that you follow the manufacturer's instructions when you're
installing that and yeah that's the installation pretty much done so it's just a matter of
popping the lid on sticking a load of labels on and we're good to go so there we go that's
this installation complete i'm sure you'll agree with me that that is one lovely looking consumer
unit and it's no accident that it looks this good it's been deliberately designed to have a kind of
contemporary feel to it moving away from the old utilitarian very functional looking consumer units
that have been produced by other manufacturers as well and you can see that in the details like the
wraparound cover that sits over the lid and gives this clean and unobtrusive finish and has this
lovely kind of sweeping aspect to the front of it that gives it a really aesthetically pleasing look
but that cover doesn't just look good it's also functional if you look at it when it's opened up
you can see here that it allows full visibility of the devices even when you're looking at it almost
from above so that means that if this consume unit was installed perhaps in under stairs covered
then you'd still be able to have good visibility on those protective devices and just sticking with
that cover if you look on the inside surface of it here you can see that would be a perfect place
to put all of your installation stickers those ones that are very necessary under vs7671
they could all sit under there thus maintaining the nice clean uncluttered look of the front of
the consumer unit but as always we want to hear from you what are your favourite points on this
Lewden consumer unit is it enough to tempt you away from your regular manufacturer or is it simply
enough evidence that you've made the right choice when you install luden products anyway please
leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below and as always thank you very much for
watching