Worst board in the world

[oscar21]

I fitted some pretty naff stuff over the years but this one has to be the worst I've come across yet. Obviously quite a few year old now and not helped by the way it has been installed either but its so badly designed its left me baffled.

The neutral bar is only one one side, buried deep under all the cables that have to run past it, why oh why not put one neutral bar on each side, same goes for the earth bar. Also there are nowhere near enough ways on the bars for the potential number of (single phase) circuits you could fit. The board is way too narrow, not even enough space for MCB's let alone RCBO's. My job was to upgrade a couple of MCB's to RCBO's as we had done some alterations on a few circuits but trying to identify the neutrals took longer than the actual job.

I had to basically strip out most of the circuits on the right hand side (you can see I've started numbering them, this picture was took just after I took the lid off so it always looked like that inside. I also had to do this at the weekend as we couldn't turn the power off any other time, this was not a job for a Saturday morning.

I thought Hager was supposed to be the best.

 

[Dan]

That looks as busy as hell!

So on is to the left on one side but to the right on the other? That's a terrible design if you're in the dark you're guessing for sure.

 

[oscar21]

They all point to the outside when they are on, I'd just turned a few off that I was working on to tell me I'd already disconnected them or needed to. The bad installation was mainly all the original red and blacks come in from the back of the unit where I've removed the breakers half way up, there has been a big hole and a bush fitted to the rear of it, the SWA 4C 25mm is glanded to the back as well. They have removed a block in the wall behind and built a service duct in the room behind to take all the cables.

Trouble with doing it this way is all the cables coming in are right in the way of those MCB's so its all been squashed down to make them fit, and under all this is the neutral bar.

 

[buzzlightyear]

I wonder where i put my tin of spaghetti ,must be on that dis board .

 

[UNG]

You can't totally blame Hager for that pi$$ poor install, yes the board may be a bit cramped but a 100x100 or a 150x150 trunking through the wall and over the top of the board would have been a better solution but the way it has been done saved a few quid at the time and now the price is being paid for the scrimping on the install

 

[Dan]

Ohh so the cable is coming in through the middle on the left side there, meaning you've got double the amount of cable on the inside on the left?

If it came in the top it would half go right and half go left?

 

[littlespark]

That’s an older board looking at the red/yellow/ blue and I can assure you Hager have changed the design.
Neutral bar and earth bar on both sides now…. plenty room.

As others have alluded to, it’s not the board design that is always at fault…. It’s the rats nest of cables that have been hurriedly thrown in to keep a shutdown time to a minimum.
Or an initially neat board being hacked up by subsequent work where even one new cable could cause an obstruction for anything else.

 

[westward10]

Most manufacturers arranged their boards in that way at one time.