Landlord electrical safety certificate

Over the years I have done a lot of testing of plastic consumer units to see how flammable they are.


It’s not difficult and does not require the destruction of a complete consumer unit, next time you need to get a new cable into a plastic consumer unit enclosure take the cable entry blank you have removed and holding it in your long nosed pliers put a lighted match or cigarette lighter under it to see what happens. The result can be quite scary, particularly as you are only igniting a relatively small piece of plastic.


Plastic consumer unit enclosures are not inherently dangerous, but do have the potential to be highly dangerous.


The location of the consumer unit does need to be taken into consideration if it has a plastic enclosure, if it’s enclosed in a non-combustible cupboard then it complies with the current edition of the Regulations, if it is in the escape route from someone’ home and showing signs of overheating heating then it’s a serious problem.


We cannot code a consumer without even seeing it. Indeed it may not even be worth mentioning on the report, other than as an rear end covering exercise.


 Andy Betteridge

Over the years I have done a lot of testing of plastic consumer units to see how flammable they are.


It’s not difficult and does not require the destruction of a complete consumer unit, next time you need to get a new cable into a plastic consumer unit enclosure take the cable entry blank you have removed and holding it in your long nosed pliers put a lighted match or cigarette lighter under it to see what happens. The result can be quite scary, particularly as you are only igniting a relatively small piece of plastic.


Plastic consumer unit enclosures are not inherently dangerous, but do have the potential to be highly dangerous.


The location of the consumer unit does need to be taken into consideration if it has a plastic enclosure, if it’s enclosed in a non-combustible cupboard then it complies with the current edition of the Regulations, if it is in the escape route from someone’ home and showing signs of overheating heating then it’s a serious problem.


We cannot code a consumer without even seeing it. Indeed it may not even be worth mentioning on the report, other than as an rear end covering exercise.


 Andy Betteridge