RCD Protection For Old Installations

It is quite an unusual situation - after all you are not obliged to remove solid walls from a building and replace them with cavity just because they do not meet today's building standards, although some safety things, like fire exits on  public buildings, do have to meet a current standard, there is a lot of accommodation for things that would not be built that way today.
 

Electrical wiring in PVC is likely to last as long as the building fabric if sized and installed correctly and well away from vermin, sources of heat etc. 
The circuit protection aspect, the consumer unit, fuses RCDs , AFDDs (boo hiss) seems to be seen as almost disposable by comparison. I'm not sure this is the right attitude.

I do not think the law makers have a grasp of the can of worms they have opened with the way current legislation has been  written for things like rented accommodation. 

The decision as to  what has to be inspected, and what constitutes a pass or fail is extremely unclear - there is no MOT inspectors handbook for the situation.

Now with an MOT, the authors of the guidance intend to set a standard, and there are mechanisms  to formally  complain and get feedback ‘up the chain’ to those with responsibility when a defective decision occurs.

 In effect the IET and the authors of the likes of the ‘codebreakers’ book become the setters of the legal threshold, and I'm not sure that is where they wanted to be - 

Put another way,  would it have been written the same if there was a clear line of responsibility for each decision back to the authors.  Probably not.  And as it stands there is no formal method for the end user to get back to the responsible person. Random test cases and calling in  council electricians as adjudicators is no substitute for a proper process. 

Given the total absence of folk killed by unearthed 1960s lights etc , I'm not convinced we needed a process to condemn it at all, but if we do, it needs a firmer footing, or the result will be very patchy and highly open to influence.
 (Now RCDs are a good idea, but there will be many cases where an RCD goes cradle to grave and saves no-one.)

Mike

It is quite an unusual situation - after all you are not obliged to remove solid walls from a building and replace them with cavity just because they do not meet today's building standards, although some safety things, like fire exits on  public buildings, do have to meet a current standard, there is a lot of accommodation for things that would not be built that way today.
 

Electrical wiring in PVC is likely to last as long as the building fabric if sized and installed correctly and well away from vermin, sources of heat etc. 
The circuit protection aspect, the consumer unit, fuses RCDs , AFDDs (boo hiss) seems to be seen as almost disposable by comparison. I'm not sure this is the right attitude.

I do not think the law makers have a grasp of the can of worms they have opened with the way current legislation has been  written for things like rented accommodation. 

The decision as to  what has to be inspected, and what constitutes a pass or fail is extremely unclear - there is no MOT inspectors handbook for the situation.

Now with an MOT, the authors of the guidance intend to set a standard, and there are mechanisms  to formally  complain and get feedback ‘up the chain’ to those with responsibility when a defective decision occurs.

 In effect the IET and the authors of the likes of the ‘codebreakers’ book become the setters of the legal threshold, and I'm not sure that is where they wanted to be - 

Put another way,  would it have been written the same if there was a clear line of responsibility for each decision back to the authors.  Probably not.  And as it stands there is no formal method for the end user to get back to the responsible person. Random test cases and calling in  council electricians as adjudicators is no substitute for a proper process. 

Given the total absence of folk killed by unearthed 1960s lights etc , I'm not convinced we needed a process to condemn it at all, but if we do, it needs a firmer footing, or the result will be very patchy and highly open to influence.
 (Now RCDs are a good idea, but there will be many cases where an RCD goes cradle to grave and saves no-one.)

Mike