Your consumer unit is essentially the heart of your electrical system and its main purpose is to protect you from danger.
The older units have fuse wire in that will heat up and break apart, effectively disconnecting the circuit it is protecting, which is moderately effective but due to the age of these units we advise an upgrade as times have moved on vastly with the introduction of RCD's and RCBO's now days the old fuse type protection is (in our opinion) massively inferior.
RCD's (in line with MCB's) and RCBO's not only offer overload protection (a circuit using more current that is intended for the cables to carry) but also monitor the live and neutral conductors to make sure they remain the same. In the event of a fault come current will travel will travel down the earthing conductor, they will pick up this imbalance and disconnect the circuit (in the case of RCBO's that are connected to an individual circuit) or circuits (for RCD's where they protect multiple circuits). Obviously we prefer RCBO's because it means that if there is an issue to cause it to trip then you only lose use of one circuit until the issue is rectified.
I appreciate that is quite a lot to take in but in simple terms RCD's and RCBO's offer much better protection, such as if you were to hammer a nail through a cable then this would be picked up almost instantly by the protective device and leave you with minimal risk of shock or potential danger. Obviously everyone has strict budgets to keep to but we know that eventually every household will have these devices and it hugely improves the safety in your home so opt to advise anyone with old rewireable fuses to get their system updated. Here are some examples of an old rewireable consumer unit the noting factor is the black insertable fuses.
Due to the age of most of these consumer units we advise an EICR prior to changing them as experience has taught us that there may be issues in the electrical circuit that may cause the new protective devices to trip. Feel free to visit our page on EICR's to find out more or get in touch using our contact form for your free, no obligation, quote
