BS7671 Amendment 2 special - afdds are in protective conductor changes colour say goodbye to type ac rcds
no more risk assessments for spds challenging times ahead for electrical designers
foundation earthing nowhere to be seen but stay to the end for the controversial
point that did make it in this is the efixx news at pen amendment 2 special
hello and welcome amendment 2 to the 18th edition of bs7671 has finally landed ending months
of speculation and leaks mounting hysteria over the cost of afds and fears over their
wholesale adoption remain unjustified as the requirements for these devices have turned out
to be a requirement only in specific locations namely higher risk residential buildings HMOs
purpose-built student accommodation and care homes if like us you thought that
higher risk residential buildings means places where people live stay tuned for a Q&A video
where we explain what it actually means also if you're appalled at the cost of an afdd i refer you
to the similar drama surrounding rcd protection on circuits with the advent of the 17th edition
the prices will come down the long suspected part 8 has arrived and relates as shown in the draft
for public comment to a new term the prosumer this word is a portmanteau of producer and consumer
and refers to the ongoing trend for homeowners to generate their own electricity generally by
solar PV the section doesn't contain a lot of regulations but at this stage it's focused more
on providing information a major change that will lead to cries of outrage in many areas of
the industry is a change to conductor colours now brace yourself for this one and make sure that you
start running down the stocks of your old colours the functional earth will now be pink instead of
cream great news for Darren Crannis there another big change to the amendment is the removal of the
need to have stickers plastered all over the front of your consumer unit section 514 used to require
stickers explaining all the dangers associated with the installation on or near the consumer
unit but now all that information will be placed in the handover pack to be given to the homeowner
the only sticker that remains relates to warnings about multiple supplies such as from solar pv in
fairness though if you want to make your consumer units look like the pencil cases of teenage girls
you can still put warning stickers on there if you want there's just no requirement for it
some changes to testing now as we see that there's been a change to insulation resistance testing
on circuits with sensitive equipment the previous version of the regs required that
if a circuit contains sensitive equipment that could be damaged by higher than expected voltages
it could be tested at 250 volts dc however there is now a change to this that requires the circuit
wiring to be tested at 500 volts dc before the sensitive equipment is connected and then again
at 250 volts dc following the connection being made this will no doubt lead to much safer and
more compliant installations a clarification regarding testing rcds has also been included
for some time now electricians have been testing rcds at half times one times five times
maybe chucking in a ramp test for good measure and then repeating them all for both peaks of
the waveform on the ac setting then if it's an a-type rcd doing the same thing all over
again on an a-type setting on the meter this is both onerous and now completely pointless
as it's more clearly expressed that the only test that needs carrying out is on the one time setting
at 0 and 180 degrees on the ac setting on your meter no matter what type of rcd it is sticking
with the theme of rcds it has also been much more clearly stated just what type ac rcds are good for
absolutely nothing say it again y'all acr cds are stated as only for use on purely resistive
circuits where there is a guarantee that there is no dc component in that circuit whatsoever
so in a modern home that would mean everything hence taipei is fast becoming the new baseline
standard now for those of us who spent hours and hours labouring over risk assessments for surge
protection perhaps calling up the local dso to find lengths of above and below ground lv and hv
supplies to a property and trying to figure out average lightning strikes per year in an area
to avoid installing surge protection you can now breathe a huge sigh of relief as that entire
process has been removed and you pretty much just need to install surge to all domestic properties
unless the homeowner has signed a document explicitly stating that they understand the
associated risks of not having it and are happy to proceed and if a homeowner understands that a
500 pound tele could be damaged by a surgeon they choose to save a few quid by not installing an spd
they're probably not used to making good life choices anyway or actually more likely it hasn't
been properly explained to them now some bad news for our electrical designer colleagues is there
is a new requirement in section 422 explicitly stating that ceiling voids above corridors forming
protected escape routes should not be used to run electrical services which if you think about every
hotel school hospital or office building that you've ever worked on that is pretty much the
standard way of running services around a building it seems those tricky constraints that we all face
when designing building services just got a little trickier no doubt now will be a vast amount of
projects being pressured to start the design phase before the cutoff date of the first amendment
in september 2022. circling back to inspection and testing it is also apparent that the huge amount
of tick boxes that have existed on the standard schedule since time immemorial have finally been
condensed to a mere 14. each of these headings covers the same elements as previous schedules
of inspections but will now feature one tick box indicating all elements under that heading
have been inspected and the condition observed for many years the uk has been given some serious side
eye from other countries in relation to the use of sockets in bathrooms as other countries gleefully
installed them with a certain gung-ho attitude towards safety well it seems the traditionally
uptight british outlook on this issue has finally been relaxed previously under bs7671 there was a
provision to allow for a socket in a bathroom but it had to be at least three metres from the edge
of the bath or shower well jpel64 have clearly given this some serious thought and decided that
the time has come to make a much more laid-back approach to this subject by now allowing for a
socket outlet installed in a bathroom a mere two and a half meters from the edge of the bath or
shower of course if like me you live in a fairly typical house if i tried to install a socket two
and a half meters from the edge of my bath it would be in my bed there have been numerous
changes to several sections of part seven in the second amendment and really there's far too many
details to go into here however one significant changes to section 712 which it may not surprise
you to hear is the section on solar pv this has gone from a mere five pages long to 15. as you
can imagine there's a lot to absorb from a section that is now tripled in length and here's something
that didn't make it into the second amendment but we thought you'd like to see it anyway
the electrical industry can breathe a huge collective sigh of relief as the concerning
subject of foundation earthing has not been included in this amendment the proposed change
may have seen electricians attending site prior to foundations being poured in order to ensure
that an earthing arrangement was in place for the property enabling among other things a prosumer
property to go into island mode this process coming before first and second fix as it would
is something i like to refer to as a prefix in fact i'm so chuffed with this expression
that i'm going to be lobbying hard to try and get foundation earthing into the 19th edition
sorry about that however before we get too complacent about dodging a bullet on this
issue it's important to know that it is now recommended that an additional connection
to earth is made to the main earthing terminal via an earth electrode it seems that the humble
earth rod is the hokey cokey of the regulations they're in they're out they're in they're out
all that remains is a recommendation to shake them all about and before you get too excited
about an earth rod only being a recommendation it seems we've been misunderstanding what
recommendation means in the regulations this has been clarified in a guide to the language used
in bs7671 at the start of the book watch out for a q a on this subject dropping very soon
this has been our take on the major changes to bs7671 although as you can see
it seems to be a tightening and a clarifying of many areas rather than a major overhaul and we
look forward to hearing from you in the comments section below what you make of the new amendment
i've been Joe Robinson and this has been the efixx news at Pen amendment 2 special bye