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This guide explains the basics of your electrical consumer board and how to manage it safely in case of issues or emergencies.
You must not tamper with your electrical supply.
In the event of power cut telephone “105” which is the national electricity helpline.
In the event of a power failure or burning smell contact your landlord immediately.
What is a Electrical Consumer Board
To check your electricity you can look at the fuses on your consumer board, it should be easy to find where the electricity in your home is controlled and distributed It’s important that you know where your fuse box is in case you ever need to turn the electricity off in an emergency. Your landlord should show you where this is and how it works when taking up your tenancy in a new property. The fuse box/consumer board contains three things – the main switch, fuses and/or circuit breakers, and Residual Current Devices.
ELECTRICAL CONSUMER BOARD EXPLAINED
Main Switch
This allows you to turn off the electricity supply to your home. You might have more than one mains switch, for example if your home has electric storage heaters. In this case you may have a separate fuse box. They are larger than the other switches and usually red in colour.
Residual Current Devices (RCD)
These are switches that trip a circuit under dangerous conditions, and instantly disconnect the electricity.
Circuit Breakers
These are automatic protection devices in the fuse box that switch off a circuit if they detect a, fault. They are similar in size to fuses, but give more precise protection. When they ‘trip’, you can simply reset the switch. But make sure you correct the fault first.
WHAT TO DO WHEN THERE IS A FAULT
How to detect a problem with your consumer board
If you have a problem with an appliance, fixing or earthing problem the first thing that may trip is a circuit breaker. this may also trip the RCD which is relevant to the supply to the circuit breaker.
In the box above you will see there are two RCD’s supporting three circuit breakers and then in the event of a major problem the main switch board switch may be tripped as well.
Firstly you should check what circuit breaker has tripped, if it is a circuit breaker it will mean that something connected to that breaker has thrown the circuit. For instance if you have a heater which has overheated it will throw the switch on the circuit.
To detect what appliance has caused the problem you can unplug all the appliances on that circuit reset the trip and then start to plug each appliance back in one by one, when you reach the appliance which is faulty the trip will trip again when you plug it in, once you have identified the problem appliance appliance you can unplug it and reset the switch . It the appliance is your then you will need to get it fixed or disposed of and if it is the landlords they will need to repair or replace it.
Trip switches are very sensitive and can be tripped by a simple light bulb blowing or surge in electricity.
Important Disclaimer
This tutorial is to assist a tenant to see if they can analyse a consumer board trip problem.
YOU MUST NOT attempt to rectify a problem unless you are confident that you can help resolve the problem without further damage.
If you do not feel confident then you should report the issue with maintenance via the Arthur app.