A good point!

I wonder what the IP rating is on the upper surface. Do those cables enter through grommets, I wonder?

Perhaps it's not located in the UK ?

Gary

This is one on one of my sites. Not having it! Especially since I specified actual height on the plan! Interestingly, the Irish Regs require the board to be not more than 2.15m from the floor to the highest protective device. The intention is to limit access by children. However, the same regulation requires the board to be “accessible”. 

It can be awkward getting a screwdriver on the top terminal bar when they are mounted next to the ceiling as well. Especially if somebody then builds a cupboard around it. 

Gary

Even worse is next to the ceiling above the toilet in a small downstairs toilet. I could not get the steps near enough to easily get to it. 

I recommended an outside consumer unit be moved inside on an EICR. The electrician put it next to the floor in a first floor bedroom!

My worst was replacing a consumer unit mounted under the stairs. I had to lie on my back and slide in through a small hatch and then reach up to get to it. I had to remove the stairs to get access to move it.

My father was partly sighted and his house had high ceilings. The consumer unit had been mounted about 8ft from the floor. He had a spate of bulbs blowing and taking out the lighting MCB and he could not reset it. I changed his bulbs to CFLs (before LEDS) but they were just as bad at tripping the MCB. Since then I have always mounted CUs at an accessible height, especially as it made it easier for me.

Some years ago my wife cussed me for going to do a call out at ten o’clock at night for lights not working when we were going on holiday the next morning and I was still packing my case.

I explained to her I wanted to go to see the house, as it was quite exceptional.

There was an old lady living in a huge house with a grand entrance gate and curved driveway leading up to the main entrance of the Victorian house with double doors in a circular tower with a turret on top of it. The main hall is panelled in oak with a Harry Potter staircase also in oak.

The elderly lady said there was three fuse boards, on in the cellar which her children had turned into a full blown night club, one in the kitchen and one upstairs in the billiards room.

Having checked the first two we headed up to the billiards room, she had to remove the chain across the doorway to remind her not to go in whilst the alarms were set, by then it was half ten at night and I’m looking up at a fuse board a full fourteen feet off the floor installed by the Midlands Electricity Board Back when they did electrical contracting work.

The lady informed me that there was a pair of wooden steps in a store room off the billiards room kept especially for accessing the fuse board, so there I was at half ten at night on top of a old pair of wooden steps pulling fuses in a board fourteen feet off the floor thinking why? Why on earth would anyone ever think it was acceptable to install a fuse board fourteen feet off the floor?

Grommets are good and have been satisfactory for many years. The box is not required to be waterproof. And where would the water come from anyway?

Z.

Were the steps marked M.E.B?

Z.

Yes, but when you put a flat cable through a round hole, at the sides you get little semicircular gaps which are at least 1 mm wide.

There is another aspect to this, which is the safe use of ladders. Ideally, the work should be in front and not to the side, which may work for short stepladders, but not long ones. So if the ladders have to go parallel to the wall, be extra careful.

Safe use of ladders