Emergency Lights are starting to really annoy me

A slight rant. Having just finished a spate of commercial EICRs I really can't understand why we tolerate these wretched things:

1 - I now expect there not to be a continuous CPC on emergency lighting circuits. The odds of someone losing the fight with the spring-loaded twin-terminal and earth-sleeving with at least one of the fittings since the last EICR are seriously high.

2 - The more ridiculous the location is, e.g. 5m up in the air, the more likely either:
a) the connections won't be properly made OR
b) the entire connector block will be broken off the PCB as someone presses too hard trying to connect them properly:
(this is how I found it)


3 - When you replace a unit, it will work for either years or just long enough for you to leave site. If it's sited 5m up in the air where you can't rest a ladder, it is guaranteed to fail within 24 hours. This one straight from the merchants lasted 4 hours:

4 - The design WILL change every 10 minutes, so 99% of the time the entire unit will need changing.

5 - About 50% of test-key switches might as well not be there as they have been fitted by a muppet and just replicate the circuit breaker. It's a pleasant surprise when one actually does what it's supposed to do and only isolates emergency lighting. The test switch I operated today killed the intake room normal lights (plunging my assistant into darkness in front of an open CU,) the top three floors staircase lighting, and the TV amplifier and Satellite receiver boxes in the attic. (It was an excellent way of quickly simultaneously meeting about 25 residents)

I'm probably asking for the impossible, but I'd love to hear of a product that:
a) has screw terminals which make (mostly) one handed connection possible, allows connection quality to be visually confirmed, and as a bonus testing can be done with GS38 tips still on.
b) keeps the design consistent long enough to simply change part of it after a failure
c) has an above average chance of working out of the box for more than 24 hours.

Any tips gratefully accepted!

I feel your pain as someone who tests emergency lighting on a regular basis. I cannot remember the last installation I came across that had any compliance to BS5266.
Your picture looks like Ansell? and they are only a shallow step up from Channel for dire reliability with regard to bulkhead fittings although the Channel twinspot I have found to be excellent.
Eterna still manufacture NM and M fittings as a separate entity and seem to be very reliable.

Bring back the Coughtrie emergency bulkheads! I removed one that had it's original 30 year old battery, still gave more than 5 hours light, but the battery was killed when a dodgy electrician messed with the wiring leaving a load of emergency lights without power for over a month. My work has started using Bell emergency bulkheads on some jobs, they have no earth terminal and push-in, fall-out terminals.

westward10 said:

Eterna still manufacture NM and M fittings as a separate entity and seem to be very reliable.

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Thanks, will give them a try. I'd really like to only go up there again once more for a good while.

I'm a big fan of central battery systems too, no messing about with separate little batteries, though you do have the complexity of remote relay units and the expense of a large battery bank. That said I'd still have one fitted if I designed my own commercial premises. I was shocked to see 18650 lithium rechargeable batteries in 2 faulty emergency lights this week, the batteries were really dead. Lithium batteries aren't really suited to standby emergency light use.

freddo said:

Bring back the Coughtrie emergency bulkheads! I removed one that had it's original 30 year old battery, still gave more than 5 hours light, but the battery was killed when a dodgy electrician messed with the wiring leaving a load of emergency lights without power for over a month. My work has started using Bell emergency bulkheads on some jobs, they have no earth terminal and push-in, fall-out terminals.

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I sent a Bell fitting straight back the other week as you say no earth terminal nor did it have a rating plate.

Not only that (although I never had any of the problems you speak of) but on the annual test none of the em. lights I fit pass the three hour test. I am talking bulkheads such as eterna specifically. Have moved over to channel as I like their remote test control.

Vortigern said:

Not only that (although I never had any of the problems you speak of) but on the annual test none of the em. lights I fit pass the three hour test. I am talking bulkheads such as eterna specifically. Have moved over to channel as I like their remote test control.

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Interesting as although we don't fit Eterna we test sites which do have them and they have a very low failure rate. Channel along with Ansell have very high failure rates from my experience. I tend to fit Fern Howard as you have the choice of fitting a X0 or X1 rating plate and they don't give that horrible unnatural blue light but the build quality of these has dropped since production moved to Vietnam, they have ridiculous small mains terminal blocks.