Outstandng 18th Oddities

Hi Andy I have just thought of an anommly, the 18th edition was the first DPC since the Internet started where the P did not stand for public, only those signed in members of the BSI website could view the draft. It made public comment very limited compared to previous publications

I agree with Graham on that point - I'm not a member of the BSI but I had little difficulty submitting quite a list of comments on the 18th DPC. Yes, there's the hoop to jump though to register on the web site - but I don't recall that being at all difficult - and nothing you wouldn't expect on any other web site where you submitted comments.


There was the hiccup with the new BSI system struggling to cope with the shear size of BS 7671 and the eventually the whole thing being made available as a PDF (which I can understand the BSI and IET being uncomfortable with from a copyright point of view), but we got there in the end. For me the bit about the new process I don't like is not being able to readily keep a copy of all my responses (for future reference) without a lot of tedious copying & pasting.


I do think the DPC process does have some value. Remember Part 8 (energy efficiency) in the DPC? - which has so many things the designer had to 'take into consideration' that the process would add a huge amount of time to the simplest design and even then it would be entirely unclear whether the design actually met the requirements of BS 7671 or not. As far as I can tell, without all the negative comments on the DPC it would have remained a fundamental part of the regulations - rather than having being kicked into the long grass of appendix 17 where it can be safely ignored by most of us. I've noticed quite a few other changes that seem to have been the result of DPC comments over the years too.


What would be nice though is some kind of feedback about why comments were apparently ignored (as some quite sensible sounding ones seem to have been - one of the advantages of the new BSI system is that you can see other people's comments as well as your own). Was it because the commenter had fundamentally mis-understood what the regulation was trying to achieve (in which case a clarification of the wording might be in order?) or did the committee basically agree but felt their hands were tied (e.g. in order to maintain compatibility with say IEC standards), or were unsure of the consequences of making the change (as it's been there for so many years no-one can remember the original problem it was meant to address) or was it a good point but the knock-on consequences would have been so wide ranging that there wasn't time to make the changes under the current edition but it might be considered in later major revisions.


  - Andy.

Agree.

Remember the near-disastrous inclusion of a requirement to install an earth electrode next to the consumer unit, or as near as is practically possible? Good luck with doing that on a 5th floor flat!

I wonder which numpty thought that one up?

Probably someone busy serving an industry which is not about turning out quality tradesmen but feeding a voracious appetite for qualifications. Qualifications demanded by an ever burgeoning bureaucracy which – like Parliament – prefers credentials over competence. And still our British trainees are regularly overlooked in favour of incomers who push wages even lower.

Then we get to buck-passing or the pc term 'Risk Transfer', a most insidious practice if ever there was one.

This is all about heaping the dung on the little man at the end of the chain.

Take Cmin for example. If I understand it correctly, the new reduced earth fault loop values were introduced to take into account the potential shortcomings of the supply network. Why should we have to do this? Why can't the supply authorities be made to spend on upgrading their networks instead?

Next, we have all metal consumer units. A cynic might unhelpfully suggest that thinking was influenced financially on that one. Why not just specify metal consumer units for under-stairs supply intake positions only? Oh! There's no money in that.

RCD protection everything? Sure, if RCBOs were only a fiver a pop, but then again, there's no money in that.


Now we have SPDs/AFDs.

Despite not living in a country which suffers regularly from tropical thunderstorms and the like, we are now expected to fit some costly gizmo of dubious useful value.

Again, we are expected to address the shortcomings of others, namely poor and less than robust circuit design in the end-product, that big fat flatscreen telly for example.

Why, instead being made to compensate for the shortcomings of the appliance makers, can we not turn this back to them instead?

A Wylex AFD thing on screwfix is over a hundred quid! The component material value contained inside is most likely a few pence-worth at most. In fact, I'll bet that the sticky labels and the carton it comes in costs more than the internal workings of the device.

Me? I'll stick to a good quality 4 way extension bar fitted with anti-surge protection from RS components instead. It's much cheaper.

kfh:

Having a general anaesthetic alone carries a 1:100,000 risk of death irrespective of the risks associated with a particular operation.

How many custommers, sorry, patients, are told that? In fact that's the risk of an unpredictable anaesthetic event and equates to about once in a career for an anaesthetist. The point in relation to electrical installations is that it is difficult to put a number to various risks (we have discussed the risk of lost neutrals/PME/EVCPs for example) and even when we can, customers don't understand the numbers.