DONT RELY ON RCD's PLEEEEESE.

[baldsparkies]

We seem to have a lot of young sparkies following the trend that RCD's are some kind of wonder device.
To explain,
An elderly lady has just come out of a 3 day stay in hospital.
Why ??
Because a young electrician had installed a dual RCD board to there property and explained how it protected from electric shock, and how wonderful RCD's were.
It left the old couple with a very mis guided conception that they were completely safe regardless.
The old chap had been decorating and left the light switch hanging by the cables.
One evening his wife went to turn the switch off, accidently put her finger behind it, and made direct contact with a live conductor.
Whilst the RCD did operate. She recieved a nasty shock that resulted in hospitalisation.
Now whilst I appreciate the RCD probably helped save her life.
Please dont for one minute think it will protect a user from an electric shock. IT WONT !!
They are a useful aid towards safety in that they can help reduce the possibility of a fatal shock.
But please refrain from telling people they prevent electric shock, and choose your words wisely.
Sorry guys rant over.

 

[Marvo]

Agreed, numbers from a small sample don't mean much and we do use good recognised brands of equipment so I could easily believe the cheaper units could have a much higher failure rate.

If boxes of units were being returned I'd suspect there might have been a particular manufacturing run with a quality issue so this also may not be a true reflection of product reliability over a longer window of time..

 

[brman]

back to the orginal post, I completely agree. Which is why I tell my customers that RCDs will hopefully help to stop you being killed but that you will still get a very painful electric shock.

I agree that telling people that they will prevent a shock is a dangerous thing to do - I've had customers tell me that it doesn't matter if they touch an exposed live because they have an RCD!