today i'm going to look at the contractor locking out kit from ideal industries
anyone who's been following the channel for some time will know i love a pouch and in front of me
i have ideal industries locking off kit in this pouch here super important for electricians as
well as people training to be an electrician that they have a locking off kit so we're going
to see what's in this one today so as i open it up the first thing i want to point out to
you is the padlock and there's a message on the box which will obviously get thrown away
that says to record the key number somewhere so when we pull it open the keys themselves have
a unique number on them and it's important we write that somewhere else in the event of maybe
locking off a circuit on site and the keys become misplaced at least with the number we'll be able
to get a replacement set cut so that's the locking off kit as well as the other bits that are within
the actual set itself so as we get these out onto the desk we can see them all laid out down here
i like the nice touch they give you a permanent marker pen for your tags so you can fill in the
details on the back it's a really good idea as well as different sets of actual the ability to
lock off either switches or breakers the two i'm going to concentrate on today are these two here
the pins out device as well as the universal mcb locking out device and they look like this
so i'm seeing those in action rather than these larger ones that are designed for more industrial
or larger switches so if we go first of all for the pins out device i've got a board here
i've isolated the circuit i've got my pins out device i'm pushing it up and i'm just going to
lock it into the two holes either side of the circuit breaker push it fully back into position
that allows the hole in the top to be fully open allowing you to put the padlock through
the key for the padlock open it up we're also going to put a sign in place
warning the person or persons in the installation about the isolation procedure
details on the back without permanent pen and then it's a simple case of putting the two together
passing it through the hole in order we can secure the isolation leaving the tag for a visual display
and as always once it's locked we need to make sure that we keep hold of the keys themselves
so there it is that's the pins out one simple idea there's two holes above a lot of the
circuit breakers that are manufactured in order that we can push those pins out
into position fully push it back into place and then lock off the actual device itself
we can also with that one include the hasp so we can have a multi-locking position so it's
not just down to that one lock so i showed it with one lock to start with but i could
have put the har spin meaning a maximum six people could be in control of that circuit
in order that all six of you have to agree remove your padlock before obviously the circuit can be
re-energized that's a really good idea we also said we'd look at the universal mcb locking off
so we've got our universal device which has a very small grub screw in it always ideal to leave it
wound down when finished so at the moment it's in the down position i'm going to wind that one
back up and that's going to go over the top of the breaker which we isolate choose a separate
breaker different from the first one push it snugly into position make sure it fits perfectly
before tightening up screw the screw will now go down into the soft plastic firm but not overly
tight you don't want to damage the breaker so firmly into position and then we're going to go
for the same process again checked it's isolated get our padlock undo our padlock with our key that
goes through the hole on the top we're going to put a sign on it as we did before so the person
knows or the people in the installation know that the circuit has been isolated maybe you feel the
details in the back as well slip it over lock it back off so we secure the isolation of the circuit
and we keep the keys again ourselves we could have done it exactly the same from the point of view we
could have used the hasp so if we look here we could have inserted the haas through the same
universal mcb lockout device and therefore had more than one padlock in place
simple unlike simple ideas easy to use so there's no barrier to it so we can easily clip it on
whether it be the universal or the pins out device in order to secure in this case a circuit breaker
in the off position we'd obviously go through the safe isolation procedure at the other end
if it was the wrong circuit obviously we'd have to unattach it and move it to a different circuit etc
all stuff that we're familiar with in the electrical industry the same device the pins
out device can be used on behind me on the main switch of the contact and board behind me so let's
have a look at that next so once again make sure all circuits are isolated you wouldn't want to
throw the switch on full load any of the positions you could have poked it through so we put the two
pins in pins out into any of the holes i chose the one third in exactly the same process locking off
kit goes through we could have used the harsp i didn't this time i just used the individual one
in order to lock it off so there we go we've demonstrated a few different ways in which we
could use those there are other devices i said in the kit these larger ones here for where the
throw in other words the main switch may be a lot longer or a circuit breaker is a lot longer in
order that we can go on and clamp down onto those and it works in a similar way it prevents it from
being pushed back into the on position i've also got an isolator down here allows us to use either
just the padlock on its own or the harsp in order to isolate that let's have a look at that next
so we've got an isolator here it's on the on position rotate it to the off if we rotate it
further it goes into what's called the locking position and opens up two possible locking areas
i'll take a padlock and my sign as always i push it through and i can choose either of the two
positions in order to lock it off slide it through and simply lock it back off and keep the key as
always and that would be secured in one position you could secure it in a second position so if you
bought yourself another padlock you could repeat the process again so two people now could have
control so two electrical contractors on the same installation can have control over re-energization
of that circuit and as before we could have used a hasp and therefore have more than one person in
control so we could have up to a maximum therefore of six people in control again
of that isolated there by using the heart i think the ideal industry's locking off kit is a really
good investment i think it covers all the devices that you're going to come across on a regular
basis in the electrical industry and we've shown two of those real common ones where we've looked
at the circuit breaker and the main switch i've also used just the locking off of the padlock
and the harsp in order to do an isolator we've got these other larger ones that will get you out of
trouble when you've got those larger devices maybe in a more industrial environment as always me and
the team at efixx are interested in your opinion are you currently using the contractor lockout
kit from Ideal Industries are you thinking about using it in the future which is your go-to locking
off kit please leave those comments below and we'll try and get back to as many as we can you