Consumer UnitUpgrades & Replacementin Loughton, Harlow & Epping

Many boards fitted in the last fifteen to twenty years use a split-load layout, with two RCDs each covering half the circuits. This is better than no RCD protection at all, but it still means a fault on one circuit can trip every other circuit sharing that RCD, including the fridge freezer or a home working setup. We fit individual RCBOs per circuit as standard, which isolate only the faulty circuit and make fault-finding far quicker because you know immediately which circuit tripped.

RCBOs cost more per way than a shared RCD arrangement, but the difference is modest against the overall job and is generally considered current best practice, particularly for landlords who cannot always get quick access to reset a board remotely, and for households running sensitive equipment that should not lose power unnecessarily.

BS 7671 Amendment 2 introduced a requirement to assess the need for surge protection on new and altered installations, considering factors such as the consequence of a transient overvoltage, whether the property has extensive electronic equipment, and the level of lightning exposure in the area. An SPD, typically Type 2, is fitted within or alongside the consumer unit and diverts voltage spikes to earth before they reach sensitive circuits.

For homes with home automation systems, networked equipment, EV charging or significant investment in appliances, we generally recommend fitting an SPD at the same time as a consumer unit upgrade, since retrofitting one later means opening the board again for a comparatively small piece of additional work.

A consumer unit does not operate in isolation, so as part of every replacement we check the meter tails for correct sizing against the supply fuse rating, and confirm the earthing arrangement, whether TN-C-S, TN-S or TT, is suitable for RCD and RCBO protection to function correctly. Main protective bonding to gas, water and any other extraneous conductive parts is also checked and upgraded where it does not meet current cross-sectional area requirements.

Skipping these checks is one of the more common shortcuts in cut-price consumer unit swaps: a new board full of RCBOs will not protect anyone properly if the earthing behind it is inadequate, which is why our test results and certificate cover the whole installation, not just the new enclosure.

A domestic consumer unit upgrade typically involves a single incoming supply, a manageable number of ways, and a few hours without power while the changeover happens. Commercial and larger residential properties often run a three-phase supply feeding a distribution board with sub-mains to smaller boards elsewhere in the building, meaning load balancing across phases and coordination with other trades or opening hours becomes part of the planning.

For commercial work we issue RAMS in advance and, where a site cannot tolerate a full power-down, plan the changeover in stages or schedule it outside trading hours, using our four-person team to keep the total downtime to a minimum.