There’s debate about exposed basic insulation in meter cupboards being satisfactory or not? Industry guidance (WRAG) say it’s satisfactory if the door’s in good shape, what’s people views on this ?
There’s debate about exposed basic insulation in meter cupboards being satisfactory or not? Industry guidance (WRAG) say it’s satisfactory if the door’s in good shape, what’s people views on this ?
I have had the challenge of running swa in to meter cabinets a few times now. I have terminated in a switched fuse in a metallic enclosure, which creates it's own challenge. The metallic switched fuse enclosure is 3 or 4 times bigger than the plastic variety, I have had DNO engineers complain that it was in the meter cabinet, even though I had used a larger 3 phase cabinet to allow more space.
Bend radius is a major pain with SWA in any part of a domestic installation, only way in to the bottom of a meter cabinet is with the bend on the outside wall and then spacing the enclosure off the backboard or doing something else to get things in line.
I would code basic insulation exposed in a meter cabinet as a C3 if the door was in good condition and C2 if not. I don't know the solution but personally I think the industry needs to find a better way to extend supplies in domestic installations, especially retrofit.
What other cables would be more suitable? Surly we could use H07RNF
SWA is usually used because it ends up running concealed somewhere (in a wall or under a floor) in such a way that if it wasn't armoured (or other means of having a concentric c.p.c.) it would need 30mA RCD protection - which obviously isn't desirable up front of an entire installation.Otherwise people could just use plain PVC/PVC sheathed single core 'meter tails'.
Personally I'd favour a version of SWA that had copper rather than steel for the c.p.c. (like DNO cables do) and then for termination into things that expect single cores, the ends are dressed with a (cold) shrink 3-way "trouser" boot -providing a sheath for the otherwise exposed cores and allowing much smaller bending radiuses (as individual cores are bent, rather than a complete multicore cable).
- Andy.
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