Thread: Earth Leakage Safety Switch

Originally Posted by ozscott

My house is 15 years old. If my safety switch trips and kills all power in the house except the stove does that mean that it will trip if someone shorts a bayonet fitting out? Ie does the one switch do both lighting and GPO circuits?

Cheers

15 years ago my sparkie wired a RCD (safery switch) only to the power points. He said that the fridges/stoves shouldn't be on the same circuit as you would lose your food every time you had a nuisance trip and didn't catch it. He didn't wire the lights as that was not a requirement then. He was just through getting his licence so he had just learnt all the rules.

So in your case I doubt if your lights are on the RCD.

These days you ask a sparkie to come and replace each and every circuit breaker with a separate RCD as they are now the same size. That way you don't lose all of the house at once, and everything is protected.

Originally Posted by bee utey

15 years ago my sparkie wired a RCD (safery switch) only to the power points. He said that the fridges/stoves shouldn't be on the same circuit as you would lose your food every time you had a nuisance trip and didn't catch it. He didn't wire the lights as that was not a requirement then. He was just through getting his licence so he had just learnt all the rules.

So in your case I doubt if your lights are on the RCD.

These days you ask a sparkie to come and replace each and every circuit breaker with a separate RCD as they are now the same size. That way you don't lose all of the house at once, and everything is protected.

Lights weren't a requirement for a long time, used to be allowed to bang on an RCD to cover the whole house, so dependant on the time it went in will be whether the lights are covered

If the lights go out when the RCD is tripped then they have RCD protection, simple really

Oh, Ovens, Stoves, cook tops, Dedicated A/C, HWS, ccts are never protected as these devices have far to much leakage for a 30mA RCD to not buisance trip

Never would the fridge of been left off the RCD protected power cct, one, that would necessitate seperating the existing power cct and its still a GPO and must be RCD protected

When RCD's first appeared on the market,& before they were mandatory,fridge was left off.This was because most fridges had a lot of heaters in them & would cause nuisance tripping.They were never designed to go on an RCD circuit.

Today things are completely different,all modern fridges(less than 20yrs old approx) are ok on an RCD circuit,any tripping means there is a fault with the cabinet.

As others have also said,all power points must be RCD protected,but some hard wired appliances on their own circuits,such as hot water systems,stoves,ovens,some A/c units,etc,are left off.

can't say i've ever seen an older house where the fridge is wired on its own circuit. I do this nowadays (occasionally) and stick it on its own rcd/rcbo

Originally Posted by Vern

can't say i've ever seen an older house where the fridge is wired on its own circuit. I do this nowadays (occasionally) and stick it on its own rcd/rcbo

Must have been a short term thing, my previous house wasn't wired that way and the old fridge used to trip the rcd occasionally. Next time the sparkie visits here the breakers will all be upgraded.

We finally got a mast power switch to the fuse box last year. I never liked not being able to isolate the main board.
At the same time sparkie fitted the seperate power for the AC.

Originally Posted by ozscott

My house is 15 years old. If my safety switch trips and kills all power in the house except the stove does that mean that it will trip if someone shorts a bayonet fitting out? Ie does the one switch do both lighting and GPO circuits?

Cheers

Don't rely on the "safety switch" to trip if someone shorts a light bayonet fitting. If they are insulated from earth and touch both electrodes of the light, they will get the full 240V. They should survive, as the current will be going directly from one side of the hand to the other. The dangerous shocks are those that go across the chest.

Aaron.