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.
