something that would be best placed on the Antiques Roadshow because in this video
presentation we're going to look at the evolution of the consumer unit and overcurrent protection
yeah absolutely and you can see here we're looking at something here that is pretty much decades-old
I think it's fair to say isn't this is a very old consumer unit that would have come out of
probably a domestic installations and there's a few kind of things to point out on here first of
all first of all if you have a consumer unit that looks like this in your home it might be time to
start thinking about getting electrician to have a little look at your installation because it
could be made safer so what's some some points of interest on here goes well for me if we're doing
the Antiques Roadshow this and lovely dovetail joints I said whoo whoever's made this is gone
about it in a beautiful way and nothing better than a bit of brown wood I think when you're on
the old Antiques Roadshow absolutely and whenever it is a beautiful thing isn't it it's really
well-made it looks like it's been handcrafted it's not been you know sort of mass-produced in
the factories and some real tender loving care gone into that but as you say perhaps there's
some safety issues here we know that to enter electrical enclosure we must use a tool or a
key yep so how was it entered when there when it was completely intact there was a little hook on
the side here and hooks come out so it's even less safe than it was before and that little
hook simply ended with no key no screwdriver no tool beyond your finger so what that meant was
that you could very very quickly and easily access the internals of this consumer unit so again quick
access into the live parts of a consumer unit possibly not the best thing in the world so we
used to perhaps taking a posi drive screwdriver on a domestic consumer unit and unscrewing the
front after the safe isolation so procedure all we're perhaps used to using the key and on more
industrial style distribution board so we're in so with relative ease would there be any other
issues once I'm in that job well the live bus bar is actually visible just under there so here yes
yes your touching a live bus bar but I'm sure it's isolated because you something yeah we should be
okay so you're saying there's no plastic guard or shield there's nothing to protect well enclosures
opened by no effort and there's no barriers which we're going to so already we're running the risk
of a massive risk of electric shock and we know that those facilities are in a modern consumer
unit we used to see in the plastic guard over it we over the front of a bus bar or the starbreaker
design which we use a college okay which therefore doesn't completely enclose the bus bar it's really
good so we're also suggesting the the internal IP rating not going to be IP2X so we poking our
fingers at live parts Joe so and that's not very clever either almost like to see means
of isolation built into my consumer unit no we can't suggest that it wasn't remote from the
consumer unit itself there might have been an isolator remote from that we didn't take this
one out but there is no built-in double pole or link to main switch switch there at all is there
so again potentially it would be very very easily to open this up and it all still be very very live
inside there okay so another downside i would suggest is there a downside with it being made
out of such a beautiful brown wood Joe again the craftsmanship is phenomenal however we've moved on
a little bit in recent years to metal enclosures and this is made of a highly combustible material
but the good thing is it's been coated in another even more highly combustible material so I think
it again it's fair to say that the leap from the wooden boards that perhaps were used to install
I honestly don't remember ever installing one of these a little bit before throwing me that
I might have done only you can answer that yeah I will looking at obviously we've gone through
that this what the plastic years yes and now we're down to the metal consumer units and really this
is the safest it's been really isn't it and that's what we do when we evolve things out
but back in the original petrol car yeah and we look where we're going now with a battery
vehicle as evolution of obviously that mode of transport so we've got over current protection
devices which is a big tick okay we but we've got them in the style Joe of a rewireable fuse
but away from me there in a bit of a phobia about white padding what is it again we've got a little
layer of asbestos in there another winner yeah which is obviously deeply worrying because that
is highly highly lethal to human beings at her so that's not the kind of thing we want to be
getting involved with it's there just to damp the ark isn't it to come take me up when the
metal fuse wire blows yeah but obviously if if you come across one of these in the wild that's
not something you want to be messing around with really so what happens is a piece of copper wire
doesn't look cover because it's usually tinned piece of copper wire is strapped between the two
points is smaller than the actual conductor in the event of excess current we melt this piece
of copper rather than the copper that's in the conductor and the asbestos will will obviously
hold that energy yeah and hopefully yeah yeah to melt away mm-hmm and you can see how it moved
on and I've almost filled now that this is the poor a family of overcurrent protection devices
the simple miniature circuit breaker yeah yeah great does its job it's got a lot more technology
built into it than a piece of fuse wire but we've moved even possibly away from these in a majority
of cases in domestic dwellings oh we've gone over and we went then to this yep and this is Crabtree
version so it's a star breaker which is slightly different than that one so what what functions
dose this have Joe so there we've got the built-in RCD technology making that an RCBO okay so it
combines the benefits of both the circuit breaker and also RCD protection as well so you can see
there great bit of kit but the other issue we've cut my hair as well is this sort of giant lump on
the top of it here to accommodate all of that RCD equipment inside there however we've gone
even beyond that now what are we looking at me okay we should get a small leap forward when
we miniaturize that device so it became the same sort of what seems our standard MCB so we've got
a miniature RCBO so all the technology we just shrunk down into one device and then we continue
on don't worry evolution goes on again and we're just at that breaking point between two parts here
because we've now got the art fault detection device this one being star breaker designs time
this wouldn't be a buzz bar type okay so we've got those now we've got the miniature RCBO Joe we've
incorporated it with what device so strapped onto the side of that now we've got an AFDD an
arc fault protection device which obviously is something that is developing through the Regs as
time goes on we're seeing an increased impression on that now however as again you can see there
that's now taking up two ways in a consumer unit yeah so that's kind of starting to bulk
out you consumer unit a little bit more again if I knew there was another solution yeah so what's
happened is that we're pending one were pending to actually being delivered to the college to
show our learners that actually they've taken the technology of the art fault detection device and
and crushed it into one device itself we've done a small video on it already but we'll do some videos
on perhaps fitting those and the benefits of fit in those etc there was a couple of downsides of
these isn't our insulation resistance test which we've done videos on which will be solved when the
end of November 2009 team we get hopefully our hands on a miniaturized version of that that's
that's big leaps and in short periods of time we've gone maybe from this style consumer unit
back what would you suggest 40s yeah yeah probably around then yeah and then we've we've sort of seen
that the development through that haven't we have the first sort of bakelite boards yeah
sort of came in and then the the sort of more modern plastics that have been developed over
time but it does seem that there's been sort of an acceleration in recent years isn't there from
from that so the you know this really was the the standard protective style yeah yeah and suddenly
now we've sort of over a few a relatively short period of time if we've just come on in leaps and
berms as we've just briefly described to you now other things to point out inside the this lovely
piece of furniture is the fact that we've got a neutral bar okay but we haven't got a bar to get
the protective conductors so there is no what we would call earth barring in there for your
earthing conductive protective bonding or cpc's and when I took out one of these previously which
got thrown away so we were pleased to see this at about a 10-year gap we're not seeing one of these
is that they anything that had a CPC was just wishes together in the board yeah with nothing
actually no clumping them no connector block certainly not a Wago just absolutely yeah just
twist it together and you hope for the best which it sort of gives you chills now doesn't it when
you think about it does and when you think now on top of this sort of stuff we won't be considering
putting in surge protection devices that we see down here we've taken massive leap forward in a
relatively short space of time maybe in the last 10 years we've made huge gains so that
was a little trip down memory lane not for me I didn't really either but looking at what looks
like a nice piece of furniture but actually did a job for a period of time but as we look at it
now Joe we don't believe it's doing the safest possible job that you could do and the regulations
continue to chain to improve safety don't end it yeah we hope this video has been some help
0:04 this and here we go