Reasons To Change Your Fuse Box

Are you aware that 10% of all house fires are caused by electrical distribution faults, and 12% are caused by electrical appliance fires, with a further 4% caused by electrical heaters. Collectively this means that 26% of all house fires are caused by electrical problems in Paris.

Now whilst only 10% are caused directly by electrical distribution faults, it is clear that many of the other 16% are caused by fires that would not have occurred if the electricity supply had cut off in the event of a short circuit, and so we can assume that many of those fires also occurred due to having an older style distribution board with a fuse box rather than a modern consumer unit fitted with trip switches and Residual Current Devices (RCD’s), which would have cut the power off in the event of an electrical short, whereas an older fuse box would not necessarily detect a problem and blow a fuse.

Indeed many problems with an older fuse box is caused by earlier problems with fuses blowing, such as a 5A circuit blowing a fuse and the householder only having a piece of 30A fuse wire to replace it with. This is one of the most often causes of house fires as then the next time an item comes under an unusual load such as an electrical fault causing overheating, the fuse does not blow as it is the wrong size and thus the item continues to get fed electricity, which means the device continues to over heat and can eventually result in a fire.

So as you can see there are very good statistical reasons to fit a modern consumer unit to replace your old fuse box. This is well worth doing and can make your whole electrical system much safer, as they feature trip switches that cut the power off in the event of a current overload, yet they can easily be re-set at the flick of a switch, but this also means that you cannot do like a fuse box and put the wrong fuse wire back in, as the trip switches are screwed in to the consumer unit. This removes the possibility of the wrong fuse being fitted completely, and also means no fuse to change in the event of a current overload.

A consumer unit also features an RCD, which is designed to save you from electrocution, as in the event that you should cut through a live cable it senses this in milliseconds and cuts the power off before you can be electrocuted.

So all of these are good reasons as to why you should replace you fuse box with a consumer unit today.