There are many ways to protect your family from Electric shock. Which way is the right way for your family? Here’s Jim to explain the difference between these devices.
Hi folks, today I’d like to share an email that I received from John. John says:
Dear Jim, my house has old circuit ceramic circuit breakers in a few different sizes. When I went to my local hardware store they didn’t have all of the sizes I need. What should I do?
Well John, firstly, thanks for taking the time to write in. You mentioned that you wanted to source your own new circuit breakers and that you wanted to do the work yourself. Have you not seen the advert with the Lama John?
Mate, sourcing gear from your local hardware store might seem like a good idea, but I’m going to suggest that your safety and the safety of your family is so important that you should be leaving the electrical work to a licensed electrician.
Ceramic circuit breakers are the original form of circuit protection. They only provide limited protection for the electrical circuit. They won’t protect your family from electric shock.
The next device that came along was the Plugin Circuit Breaker, these are just outright dangerous. It is far too easy for someone to swap them with the wrong rating, overload the circuit and possibly cause an electrical fire. And again, these don’t give your family any protection from electric shock.
Then came the Residual Current Device, or the RCD. These safety switches were the first device to offer protection to people. It’s the job of the safety switch to cut the power to the circuit within a fraction of a second is a leakage is detected. This might happen if there is a faulty power point or faulty hairdryer John. But the safety switch doesn’t protect the circuit, so there is still risk of an electrical fire if the circuit is overloaded.
The latest and greatest is the Combination Safety Switch/Circuit Breaker. This little beauty will protect the individual circuit, each circuit will have its own earth leakage detection so nuisance tripping becomes a thing of the past. And, more importantly, it protects the people John. It protects the ones you love, or at least, the ones in your house.
So, as always, for all things Electrical, I suggest you call this bloke, Brad Sims at BH Electrics.
© BH Electrics 2024
