Consumer Units For Workshop

UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
For most domestic applications in the Uk we use type B which trip at 3 to 5 times rated, ie 20A device will trip between 60 and 100 amps. Type A are very sensitive and trip at just 3 to 5 times rated and used only when certain electronic equipment is being fed and are not widely available.
I think you will find you are confusing type A MCB's with type A RCBO's. or RCD's type AC RCD's will certainly trip too early for most uses in a workshop, but then if using MCB's with induction motors usually type D MCB's would be better, but I am a great advocate of RCBO's
 
but I am a great advocate of RCBO's
That is all I would fit when changing boards, just such a better option not having common RCD's to knock out half the board, now people can worry less about their freezers. I think the confusion comes about because they tend to list them from the overload perspective and not the residual curve, so most suppliers will just list them as say a " Hager ADA316G Small RCBO B Type 16 Amp 30mA 6kA " or EZ9DRB32 - Schneider EZ9D16832 Easy9 32A RCD 1 Pole + Neutral 6kA 30mA type B RCBO with Overcurrent Protection and I did like Schneider. It is only when you look at the spec that it mentions " Earth-leakage protection class: Type A " If they had been more sensible with RCBO's they might have used B-A or C-A to make it obvious.

With Industrial you can get problems because you get situations where an operator needs access to the RCB but is not allowed access to the overload device so RCBO's no use.
 
That's the problem with 1 Pole + Neutral it's only the Phase that is operative the Neutral is just dragged along with the Phase on a fault condition.

My favourites are the dual pole Hager RCBO's: Electrical Wholesaler - Search through thousands of electrical products and no fly lead. but they do take up two module space's in the consumer unit, my workshop is in France so have to use dual module everything which I find much more convenient, but does make a three or four row domestic board with all radials and individual specified circuits.

Typical domestic three phase board with RCD and MCB protection, can't find the pic of my RCBO board.

DSC00487.jpeg
 
Last edited:
As I have said in other post, industrial is so much easier than getting involved with domestic and having all phases and a proper TN-S supply makes design easy. So I have heard Germany uses three phase in many domestic settings for hot water and so is France the same.
 
You can get three phase domestic hot water tanks, all mains pressure as well, most rural properties in France are three phase supply, with only 20amps/phase makes it easy to size cable LOL, also makes installing an induction hob easy, mine use's two phase's.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top