Great post Paul!,
I hope that I can do justice to it in replying.
I can understand why many people will disregard these rules and say "Why shouldn't I be allowed to connect my cables into my switchboard?"
Paul,
There is not only a safety issue but one of common-sense.
Here in NZ you can't get your "mate" the Electrician from down the road to certify your house for you.
You have to have an Electrical Inspector check all of the wiring that has happened before the Inspection takes place.
One thing that doesn't seem to get through to a lot of Home-owners, is
Don't screw the light switches or the socket-outlets to the wall before the inspection happens.
I think demanding RCD protection on all lighting circuits is a little extreme.
Paul, I can only agree, but you have to figure in the "clown factor" where people will do stupid things like change a bulb with the fitting live.
I think they've got a little confused with double negatives there, but I assume that was meant to say switchboards must be between 1.2 and 2.0m above ground/floor level. Quite a narrrow permissible range.
One thing has to be said about this requirement, it is there for a reason.
Less than 1200mm would cause a problem with flooding here, higher than 2000mm (In a 2400mm stud house)would mean that the chances of the main isolator being able to be opened in an emergency could be less.
Interesting that running power to each switch location seems to be the recommended/usual method for new work there.
Yeah funny thing Paul, in new housing here you will only see proper switch-fed circuits.
In any rewires or where the Electrician (and I use that word loosely) buggered up his quote, do you actually see 3-plating happen here.
How about your permanent connection units? Presumably you can use unswitched versions of those for things such as alarm panels or other devices where you don't want power to be shut off accidentally?.
Alarm systems are hard-wired here, to their own breaker, usually a 6 or 10 A single pole protecting a length of 1.5mm2 cable.
Oddly enough, you are required here to have a seperate isolator to the one on the PCU as far as Electric Hot Water systems go.
O.K., for a moment that main earthing lead size seemed small, but then I realized that in N.Z. this isn't the same as in British parlance, what with you having the main neutral-earth bond in the panel itself. And as I think you know, where PME / TN-C-S / MEN is used as the earthing method here our Regs. don't require a separate ground rod.
6mm down here is looking pretty shaky these days.
And is it in your rules that the bonding conductor has to be connected to the ground rod itself, or is this just the guide's suggestion?.
These days Paul, what do you bond to?, plastic pipes?, non-metallic sink benches, plastic baths?.
I'll bond everything in the house, if it is there.
Such switches here are double-pole, but then not all systems are PME/MEN, so the Regs. here have always assumed that to fully isolate an appliance the neutral must be broken as well.
What exactly Paul is lost by not interrupting the Neutral?.
Hmmm.
6mm2, might have been good back in the 1970's and 80's but these days, we require at least a 10mm2 main Earth lead, 16mm2 in some cases.
Thing that annoys me is the way that it is taken out through the building.
[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 02-07-2007).]
