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Wylex combined AFDD/RCBO

alanblaby
I was in the wholesalers today when the Wylex rep turned up. 

He had a combined RCBO/AFDD that he was showing off. The same size as a circuit breaker, much like their current range of RCBO's, albeit these have a neutral fly lead.

If you believed him, we will all be fitting these in a years time. He equated it to people fitting a new boiler, they do that at 10-15 year intervals for £1500, we'll be doing the same with consumer units at a similar cost!

There was  a lot of salesman talk about 15000 house fires a year caused by electrical faults, and this unit will stop that. I'm not sure he has assessed the figures correctly, all of these fires cannot have been caused by arcing.

Anyway, he says they are very high tech, and internally test their AFDD capability every 15 hours (how, without cutting the power?).

Lifespan? He says a long time. We laughed. If the AFDD side fails, it needs a new complete unit. 

And the current cost - £110 each.

Until they are below £35, I just cannot see many of these being sold.
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    If that is the case, both my boiler and consumer units are a couple of decades past their sell-by dates.




    You are not alone. More like inspected and serviced every ten years, certainly not changed. Perhaps he is thinking of his cars.

    I am not convinced of the need for AFDDs. Wago style terminals or other designs with some spring are a better solution to the loose contact problem for fixed wiring, and the problems of overloaded plug in adaptors and extension leads snagged in doors are really solved by letting folk fit enough sockets that the things are not needed.

    Oh, and discouraging those silly plastic 'child plugs' that make the socket terminals loose.


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  • 0

    If that is the case, both my boiler and consumer units are a couple of decades past their sell-by dates.




    You are not alone. More like inspected and serviced every ten years, certainly not changed. Perhaps he is thinking of his cars.

    I am not convinced of the need for AFDDs. Wago style terminals or other designs with some spring are a better solution to the loose contact problem for fixed wiring, and the problems of overloaded plug in adaptors and extension leads snagged in doors are really solved by letting folk fit enough sockets that the things are not needed.

    Oh, and discouraging those silly plastic 'child plugs' that make the socket terminals loose.


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