We were called out about a caravan with a 15Amp plug having issues.

After further investigation we found the switchboard to be old fuses still, and the 15amp caravan plug was going through a converter to a 10 amp plug, which was then plugged into a 10amp power socket. After seieng the fuses being used, and the head and arking inside the fuses that had been replaces, we had a duty of care to replace the board with something safe and test each circuit to ensure there was no risk of fire or electrical shock.

Whats wrong with Fuses?

Fuses protect the cable when wired correctly with the right size wire, unfortunately when these blow people arent sure what wire to use, and will often use screws, nails or whatever they can find at the time, making them completely useless for protecting the cable.

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The whole idea of the fuse is that it protects the cable, thats it, it should burn out before he cable, however this doesnt happen quick enough, an unfortunate example is when the foil insulation was being put into all the homes and people were dying from electric shock even though there were fuses installed.

Whats involved in a switchboard upgrade?

Every upgrade is different, but the main thing we do, is install safety switches on all circuits (This protects people from shock) and we size the circuit breakers properly for the cable (This protects the cable for catching on fire).

We also upgrade the board when required, for example, this property had the switchboard near the rear of the house, and to appease energex regulations, we needed to extend all the circuits to the front of the house withing 2m, we also had to avoid the down pipe and asbestos panel.

With every circuit protected, the risk of electric shock or fire has been reduced drastically.

We also ran a dedicated caravan 15amp circuit along with anew earth to an earth electrode as the previous earth was on the old plumbing pipes.

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