I did an EICR today on a big posh house in Hampstead London. The house is undergoing an extensive refurbishment. The installtion was supplied from a split load consumer unit with the socket circuit and the cooker on the RCD side of the board. Next to the board was a double pole BSEN60947-3 100A switch in it's own enclosure marked up as "RCD Bypass". The switch was in the on position. With the front cover off the consumer unit I could see that the switch was wired to the top and bottom of the RCD so that when the switch was in the on position it shorted out the RCD. This was very useful for me as it speeded up the loop testing process on the 3 No. socket circuits and the cooker circuit. I have noted it on my report as a C3 and recommended it be removed. I left it in the off position when I left the premises for the protection of the bulders on site who were using power tools some of which were not 110V.

I have seen a good few RCDs bypassed with conductors including a premises used by members of the Royal Family but never a specialy installed switch to short out the device.

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John Peckham

http://www.astutetechnicalservices.co.uk/

I used to use jump leads back in the 1980s when it was difficult, more or less impossible, with a LT5 loop tester.

I think it is an interesting idea, though, if the bypass switch was locked off in normal use....

Legh

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Why do we need Vernier Calipers when we have container ships?

http://www.leghrichardson.co.uk

"Science has overcome time and space. Well, Harvey has overcome not only time and space - but any objections."

It's not that uncommon on switchgear John - quite common to have all sorts of by pass switches, wrap around switches and bus section bypasses to allow post event reconfiguration, breaker swap outs, section testing of a switchboard, UPS bypass and the like.

Sounds like a bit of an issue to be bypassing the RCD in a domestic though - even if it's a "quality" affair

regards

OMS

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Failure is always an option

We had it on comms sites with a contactor fitted around the RCD.

The contactor coil was energised off the light switch so on the basis we should turn the lights on upon entry and off at exit the site was RCD protected whilst engineering work was being carried out but once unmanned the RCD was out of circuit to prevent tripping and loss of service.

Not on a domestic though ....


Stu