Take fire-risk appliances off the shelves immediately

That is good electrical installation practice, Derek, but unfortunately it is not a general requirement other than in new houses, although I believe it might be a requirement for refrigerators and fridge/freezers that run continuously to have a switched socket or an isolating switch accessible at all times.

I assume that current practice is to have switched fused spurs running off a ring main, connected to sockets sited under the worktops. Useful, but you have to watch out for guests who helpfully switch off the freezer or fridge last thing at night. 🙁

The problem with older houses is that sockets can be behind appliances, so that in event of fire it is necessary to turn the power off at the consumer unit.

I’m quite pleased with our system, where it’s the same as Derek’s and I’ve added double pole, double throw switches for the oven, tumble drier and washing machines.

Derek – I looked for appliance isolation switches as one indicator of modern wiring when I bought my present house. I doubt that many householders would add them unless having their kitchen replaced because cables have to be laid in walls and power can be switched off at the consumer unit in the event of fire. I once had to deal with a cooker fire for a neighbour who was in a state of panic. I turned off the power at the CU and would not have been able to access the appliance switch because it was close to the cooker – and the fire.

Although I have my reservations in this case, I do agree that householders and landlords should keep their wiring up to date and have it checked periodically. I have read that many homes still have fuseboxes and don’t have a single RCD.

Ian – Plug-in appliances usually have a fused single-pole isolation switch, whereas wired-in appliances such as ovens and hobs will have a double-pole switch. In the home, double-throw switches are usually found in lighting controlled by two or more switches and not in power circuits.

Appliance isolation switches should be incorporated into the design stage of a new kitchen which ours wasn’t. Everyone probably knows they should have a cooker isolation switch, but it was only when an electrician became involved we discovered what was required by which time half the units were installed. So the switches are legal but not in ideal easily accessible places and in an emergency we might have to go to the main CU.

Now I know what is required, I would want the isolation switches to be on a mini CU near or even just outside the kitchen exit. As wavechange found out, you might not be able to get near a switch if an appliance is on fire.

When I wired our house 40 years ago I put isolation switches above the worktops connected to socket outlets below, adjacent to where the major appliances would be located. So in the event of a problem I could quickly isolate the offender without going to close. It is also convenient if I choose to isolate an appliance while it is not being used. This seemed a common sense approach and convenient.

It is important to know what the switches in your consumer unit control and they should be clearly labelled, so that you can switch off the kitchen circuits without losing all your supply – to lights for example.

One of the first jobs I did when I moved in was to improve the labelling of the circuit breakers on the consumer unit. The garage has its own CU but there was no indication that this was fed from the one in the house and it took some time to work out that the unlabelled circuit breaker was for the smoke alarms.

What Alfa suggests makes sense, particularly if the CU is not well sited or nearby. In event of fire it’s risky to go into a smoke filled room to turn off the power.

I also label the switches that are not for obvious functions in order to avoid confusion. In the kitchen there are isolation switches for the hob, oven, extractor hood, dishwasher and boiler [which is actually upstairs, and it took me some time after we moved in to work out what the switch was for]. The utility room also has switches for the washing machine, fridge/freezer, extractor fan, the patio lights and the garden power sockets, and they are not all in the most obvious places. Getting to the consumer unit means going into the garage where there are various impediments to rapid action.

I’ve never understood why the siting of consumer units is so variable, having seen them hidden under stairs and near the ceiling in some older properties. Mine is in the downstairs toilet. I’ve not seen a main consumer unit in a garage, but maybe that’s because I have not looked. It would be handy for anyone who wants to add a charging point for an electric vehicle, but otherwise a thick cable is needed to take the power from the garage to the house.

I wish the current regulations were freely available so that we could check how well our homes measure up. I have two power shower pumps that have been linked to the immersion heater circuit via fused isolators. The circuit is capable of handling the power and I’ve not used the immersion heater other than to test it, but my understanding is that an immersion heater should be on its own circuit.

There are a number of explanatory books on BS 7671; the “official document” is aimed at professionals and parts can be difficult to interpret without considerable knowledge.

Electrical Safety First publish useful Qs&As. inevitable the none you want to ask is not there 🙁 . https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/professional-resources/wiring-regulations/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI243CiMbS4QIVyLTtCh0hkw71EAAYAiAAEgJdrvD_BwE

I’m familiar with this, but others may not be. I’m in favour of having information available in a form that is easier to understand, but this needs to be comprehensive, structured, indexed and public access to the full regulations is needed, even though not everyone will be in a position to use them.

Some things are complicated and some of the changes introduced in the 18th edition wiring regulations will continue to be debated but others are very straightforward and easy to understand. Imagine how we would cope with pursuing our consumer rights if we had to rely on buying a copy of the Consumer Rights Act etc. or a book on the subject.

The wiring regulations are a joint production of the IET and BSI, bodies that are private and must recover the costs of all the work that goes into what is now BS 7671. If the taxpayer paid for all this work, as it does for laws, then maybe it could be free. However the vast majority of people will not ever want to look at the wiring regs, let alone make use of them, and much of the work they cover should be left to competent professionals. Any amateur will only be concerned with domestic installations and books are readily available showing the 18th edition’s requirements, typically £15. They are very limited in what they are legally allowed to undertake.

Useful information about what work can be carried out by an amateur is covered in useful detail in ‘Part P’ of the Building Regulations: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/441872/BR_PDF_AD_P_2013.pdf

As I have explained many times in other Convos, a different funding model could make British Standards etc. freely available to everyone, and the same applies with the wiring regulations.

Many amateurs will not tackle electrical work even where this is permitted, but understanding the regulations can help make home owners/tenants understand whether their home complies with current standards.

As Which? provides much valuable information perhaps that should also be made freely available? However I doubt most of the current funders – the Members – would continue to provide their annual subscriptions to pay for its work. So like Standards the money would have to come from somewhere else. Probably the hard pressed taxpayer. I wonder it they’d be happy to pay for a very very small minority of people with an interest in Standards to have free access. We could do it as it used to be done through municipal reference libraries; a good use of council tax money?

Which? have never responded to the question as to whether they would make online standards available to seriously interested members who wanted to help Which? in its work.

I would like to promote greater awareness of modern standards for domestic wiring and for householders to have a better understanding of the requirements so that they can spot possible problems, for example when a replacement kitchen is being installed. I have given a couple of examples of wiring that might not be best practice or even permitted and had the work been done for me rather than the previous owner of the house I would have wanted to check that the work complied with the wiring regs before paying the bill.

I do not disagree with anyone having a greater understanding of something – whether building work, plumbing, electrics. I consider explanatory books and online resources (Electrical Safety First for example) are of far more value to the layperson than, say, BS 7671 which requires a good understanding if it to be used properly. Books are inexpensive.

If you don’t want to spend money on learning something then the question that remains unanswered is how else it should be funded.

The wiring regulations could be made available online, like the Part P building regulations are. They can continue to be funded by those who need to use them in connection with their work. As I said before, much of what is in the wiring regulations is not difficult to understand.

This seems to have gone well off-topic.

Which? have been asked to explain the changes that have been made to or proposed in the revised safety standard for fridges etc – BS EN 60335-2-24 They have also been asked what they can divulge about the activities of the international working groups (that include BSI [UK] representatives) that are looking at fire in domestic appliances.

Any news?

The product must meet the requirements of the relevant international or national safety standard. “Quality” is different – how long the product lasts, whether it functions correctly for example, whether bits continue working. BSI generally adopt the European standards, which are usually based on international standards; these are published as BS ENs and these “harmonised standards” allow trade throughout the EU.

Reputable companies will have an extensive audited quality systems complying with ISO 9001 that not only looks at quality control of the product in manufacture but all the processes that go behind it, including sales, design, laboratory, drawings and documentation, complaints etc etc.

Safety standards specify tests that must be applied in the factory to every product before it is released.