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Consumer Unit, Flashback, flashback, flashback.

If you remember these you are just too old?


Whilst viewing there is a prize for the first viewer who spots and identifies the mistake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUyjPosp6g8


Z.
  • Thanks for that Norm. It is useful info.


    I have come across a clip about the early Wylex two button M.C.B.s showing their operation, by John Ward. A marvellous reliable compact design.

    https://www.flameport.com/electric_museum/wylex_fuse_boxes/wylex_sk_push_button_circuit_breaker.cs4

    .
  • Hello Zoomup.


    The wooden brown Wylex has been fitted onto a timber surface without it's paxolin backplate - a possible fire risk. I 've installed hundreds of these in my lifetime and they were always excellent.  I only ever encountered a problem with one installed by A N Other.  It was fitted without its paxolin backplate and the cables were routed back-entry directly into the wall cavity.  After many years of good service dust from the cavity accumulated in the main switch and it started to cook.  The owner smelt it and called me before things got nasty - there was no damage to the tails and a new Wylex with a backplate fixed things.  The white Wylex is the "all insulated" type, and did not need a separate backplate. Good times!


    Regards,


                  Colin Jenkins.

  • Colin Jenkins:

    Hello Zoomup.


    The wooden brown Wylex has been fitted onto a timber surface without it's paxolin backplate - a possible fire risk. I 've installed hundreds of these in my lifetime and they were always excellent.  I only ever encountered a problem with one installed by A N Other.  It was fitted without its paxolin backplate and the cables were routed back-entry directly into the wall cavity.  After many years of good service dust from the cavity accumulated in the main switch and it started to cook.  The owner smelt it and called me before things got nasty - there was no damage to the tails and a new Wylex with a backplate fixed things.  The white Wylex is the "all insulated" type, and did not need a separate backplate. Good times!


    Regards,


                  Colin Jenkins.




    Hello Colin,

                            that peaky dust does cause problems, problems with your customer's  Wylex consumer unit, problems in tumble driers and washing machines causing fires, trouble in extractor fans causing fires. Also a build up in electric motors can cause overheating by restricting ventilation. We need to avoid such build up if possible.


    Z.

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Wot? No mention of the Wylex Extenso so you could extend a 3 way by adding a 2 way bit on the side................... No Entendre intended! 


    Regards


    BOD
  • Wylex Extenso. Those were the days ?

  • ebee:

    Zoom,

    was that one for the normal fuse cover and one for the larger version to accomodate MCBs but nobody ever used them so the wholesalers never stocked them? ?




    Hmmm. It`s not often I am right but I was wrong this time.


  • ebee:




    ebee:

    Zoom,

    was that one for the normal fuse cover and one for the larger version to accomodate MCBs but nobody ever used them so the wholesalers never stocked them? ?




    Hmmm. It`s not often I am right but I was wrong this time.


     




    We all make mistakes ebee, memory fails sometimes, I know that it does with me. I have to keep a notebook and diary so that I do not forget things. That is normal. Errors and failures have allowed science and engineering to advance. John Hunter used to remark that the art of surgery would not advance until professional men had the courage to publish their failures as well as their successes. Watt the engineer  said of all things most wanted in mechanical engineering was a history of failures: "What we want is a book of blots." When Sir Humphry Davy was once shown a dexterously manipulated experiment he said-"I thank God that I was not made a dexterous manipulator, for the most important of my discoveries have been suggested to me by failures."


    So with us humans, errors and failures have been responsible for later successes, discoveries and improvements.


    Edited to correct spelling mistakes.


    Z.