Upstairs Fuseboard

[sl1210]

Hi guys got another quick question.

I am going to change 2 fuseboxes in a house tomorrow. Now the main one under the stairs does all the ground floor sockets, kitchen etc and i will fit a 17th edition dual rcd board.

The second fusebox is upstairs fed from a henley block under the stairs and supplies all the upstairs circuits lights, sockets etc.

Now i was only going to put a 5 way main switch board upstairs because there is only 3 circuits, and probably use rcbo's.

My question is could i put a board with an rcd as a main switch supplying the mcb's, or does it need to be a dual rcd board or rcbo's like normal even if it is only doing the upstairs??

Cheers

 

[rich.250]

If it feeds all upstairs ccts I would say you need some division.
You don't want to loose the whole of upstairs in a fault.

 

[trev]

If he's installing RCBOs he won't Rich

 

[sl1210]

well no i was wandering if i could avoid the rcbo's as it would be cheaper.

 

[trev]

In that case, like Rich said you need to think about separation.

 

[Pik]

I assume the tails to the upstairs db are more that 3m from the cutout, and only protected by the main fuse? Also depending on the route taken by the tails to upstairs you may have to have them rcd protected

 

[sl1210]

16mm t+e feeding the upstairs board. probably just under 3 meters. run through partition so i think their fine

i will probably just stick to my original rcbo idea, was just curious if it was allowed to have a main rcd protecting all the circuits upstairs ;0))

 

[rich.250]

If he's installing RCBOs he won't Rich

Well rcbos are separate Rcd's trev

 

[rich.250]

I think you need a switch fuse for the sub!
If not 30ma Rcd if less than 50mm deep.

 

[trev]

Well rcbos are separate Rcd's trev

Yeah but with RCBOs on each individual circuit he's only going to lose the one with a fault on

 

[rich.250]

Yeh,
Best solution in my opinion trev

 

[Engineer54]

I think you need a switch fuse for the sub!
If not 30ma Rcd if less than 50mm deep.

If he supplies the upstairs from an RCD device downstairs, he'll stand a very good chance of losing the whole upstairs anyway, whether using RCBO's upstairs or not, ....unless it's an S type device!!!

 

[rich.250]

If he supplies the upstairs from an RCD device downstairs, he'll stand a very good chance of losing the whole upstairs anyway, whether using RCBO's upstairs or not, ....unless it's an S type device!!!

Yes my point E54. But if just T and E buried less than 50mm it needs 30mA protection doesn't it......
Hopefully it's not buried lol

 

[Pik]

If the supply to upstairs is less than 50mm in partition wall it should be protected by rcd you could alsosay it needs a separate sw fuse if not, I bet the 16mm T&I into the henley blocks does not look the best probably with the single insulated cores sticking out. Although if the mains to the upstairs db is less than 3m and can be used as a draw wire through the partition (assuming the house is not split into two flats) then it would not take much work to extend the ring and lighting circuit to be fed from the one db. Then you can have a dual rcd board and no problems splitting your circuits between them correctly?

 

[Strima]

I'm with Pik on this one, probably easier and cheaper to extend the current circuits to meet the new board. Either joint with MF kits of DIN rail box, other options available.