Indeed - and their meters, and all modern cutouts - and, indeed, the vast majority of all components in a domestic electrical installation ... not to mention the actual cables.
Yes, it's often occurred to me that we could have something like that. However, as with the more general issue were discussing, the question is whether serious overheating/combustion in CUs is sufficiently common to warrant/justify changes in every electrical installation in the country.
AFAIAA the 'evidence' was a report by the London Fire Brigade, which indicated that a large proportion of fires they attended appeared to have a source within the service cupboard.
I see. Given that many such cupboards would also contain a plastic cutout, very probably a plastic-enclosed meter and possibly plastic-enclosed Henley's, isolators, RCDs etc., do you know if they narrowed down the source to the CU (rather than 'something in the cupboard') in many cases?
As you are presumably implying, that would would, in itself, be pretty daft!
A good question, the answer to which I'm not certain. Given that one can, for example, add an RCD socket to a non-RCD-protected circuit without having to bring the rest of the circuit up to current regs, I suspect that the answer may well be 'no' (and, BTW, the issue arises from 1st January 2016).
No, I don't know that. Given the mistakes in the article that BAS linked to earlier, I rather suspect that they were looking for evidence to support an assumption, rather than an objective investigation. I have reason to believe that a particular manufacturer co-operated with the investigation, and funnily enough had developed a metal domestic CU before the example was included in the draft amendment...
That is obviously what I've feared.
It's not the first time you've told us things like that, although this case is perhaps slightly indirect. Do not BSI, IET or even JPEL feel uncomfortable about situations in which it appears that BS7671 may be being influenced, sometimes (as at present) in a manner that results in significant wide-ranging changes, by considerations and interests which many people would probably regard as 'inappropriate'?
John, yes, and there are rules intended to prevent inappropriate behaviour in committee meetings, that apply to all BSI meetings including JPEL/64. However, remember that the members of such committees are expected to provide their expertise. If one has particular knowledge that is not widely known (not an unusual situation) then he/she is expected to share the results of that knowledge with the committee. If a manufacturer had indeed cooperated with the LFB then it is possible that they would know the results of that cooperation before the rest of the committee. Their terms of employment would probably dictate that the knowledge of those results would be used to try to gain a commercial advantage. That does not necessarily imply 'inappropriate' behaviour.
Thanks. In an 'ideal' world, one would probably hope that considerations of commercial advantage never came into the workings of any such committees (or their members) but, in the actual world, I suppose one has to accept that many of the members will have 'dual loyalties'. The important point is obviously that considerations of commercial advantage should not be allowed to undermine the objectivity of the committee in any way.
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