Shower consumer unit

what's the installation method? what OCPD is protecting the distribution circuit? how comes you are not splitting the tails with Henley blocks and feeding the new board?

 

I wouldn't worry to much as your electrician will Know. Some methods would be to use Henley blocks and tails to feed new board or if the existing board can handle the load and mcbs are not obsolete then your electrician could free up a way in your existing board by moving one of the existing circuits over to a spare way on the new board....this will then leave a way in the existing board to feed the new board.

 

I am not by any means advocating you carry out this work yourself. It requires cutting the seals to the electricity supply which is a prosecutable offence if found to be done by a non skilled or incompetent person or even someone wishing to steal energy from the energy supplier, lots of problems in cutting through these seals, provided they exists already....

The separate shower consumer unit will not be wired to your current consumer unit. A connection block will be fitted between the meter and cables referred to as tails will be run to the shower consumer unit while the current tails will be connected to the current cheapo split load consumer unit.

That is how it is done, each consumer unit has its own tails taken from just after the energy meter.

 

It is actually an offence for ANYONE to interfere with the suppliers equipment,including cutting the seals,even electricians! There are however one or two DNO's that allow this to certain electricians who are registered with them,they provide temporary seals and you have to tell them why you've cut the seals.On a smart meter it can notify the supplier if the power goes off and for how long,in that way they can check if there is a power outage in your area and if not they can send someone round to find out why the power is off.

 

Its an offence to do a lot of things but those things still get done - speeding, ******* down an alley after the pub, smoking weed, etc etc etc but who cares, at the end of the day they need proof. Personally I'm astonished that after 25 years of pulling fuses I have never come across one that was sealed - see how easy it is.

 

The point I was making was that there are no special exemptions for sparks.the reason you never see the seals is down to the seal fairies. Ask any spark they'll tell you all about them.lol

 

I give up

 

When I had my cut out replaced the local rec wanted to know who cut the seals when I sent them pics of the fuse that was then in place. I told them B.G.

 

Blame B.G. for everything, including the weather today.

 

A lot of them take a photo now and upload it to your customer file,that way if there's an issue 2 years after your meter has been changed and you try and say it was never sealed,they produce a time/dated photo saying oh yes it was.We had an issue at work once and they had photo's of the meter,before and after replacement.

 

And so what do they actually do about it? All I got was a stroppy email about how dangerous it is to pull out a fuse.

What was your "issue"?

 

Well unless they have a photo of you actually cutting the seal then its pretty pointless, If they want to be awkward about it let them prove you cut it, if they ask say no idea, could be anybody.

 

Sometimes the dno can be as bad as anyone else,they did some work on my house and removed the spreader box cover from under the head,they said the head needed to be replaced and someone would be back,2 years later and nothing,you could see the conductors where they came out of the sheath on the service cable and the whole thing was unsafe.I rang them up to complain and again they said they'd send someone out,we were just on our way out at around 7.30pm when an emergency engineer turned up,he wanted to know why we'd removed it,I explained the situation and he was amazed that it had taken so long to replace it,it took him around 20 minutes to replace the head.Apparently now at least in my area they are sending out emergency engineers in the evening to catch up on the day work,personally I think it's just to avoid paying on call engineers to sit around waiting for a genuine emergency.

 

Many are taking more and more date recorded pictures today. Even i take pictures of a job to make sure nothing is tampered with.
Labourers love to get of work and be lazy by breaking equipment so they get to do easy work then the engineers get the blame. Not if one takes a photo though to prove someone tampered with it.

 

It may prove that it was there 5 years ago doesn't prove that it was last week or that I did it.

 

I have cut seals, due to the fact that the Electricity at work at prevents live working (not testing) and how are you to make tails dead, HOWEVER the cut out is Only removable with a tool (so prevents joe blogs from fiddling) But I always re~seal what I have cut so leave it as I found it. And had no problems in 20 years, even moved heads but thats a different story.

 

By making arrangements with the DNO as you are required to do.