Upgrade & Reorganise CU

jasgrif11

I recently had Solar installed, which is in a sub-board, however during the installation I noticed how much of a mess my main consumer unit looked (installed in 2007) or does it?

I have an electrician calling next week (not the same company from 2007) to advise on a changer-over switch. I was considering asking him if anything in the main consumer unit should be upgraded in line with modern standards and if he could also clean up the wiring.

Should I ask anything in particular?

How much would you estimate to clean up the wiring? I love the work Artisan Electrics do on their YouTube videos.

Note: I have a large Solar array and 40kWh battery.

AmpMan

How much time to you spend looking at it with the cover off?

jasgrif11

I hear you, it was messing with my mental furniture though when I saw it :)

More want to know if it looks safe or if anything needs addressing

meercat

It looks messy alright but I’m not sure if too much can be done to tidy it up

replacing it with a bigger board will help or replacing the trip switches with all of the same brand

testing and certification of a new board will be costly also and some earthing and mains cables upgrades may be required

is that meter upside down?

Daniel son

Leave the cover on it and dont worry about it.

jasgrif11

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121566674#Comment_121566674

It's a meter on the heatpump and at the time it was the only way they could fit it in due to cable length. That can be removed as I use a Shelly CT to monitor the heatpump now.

Buffman

I was expecting a photo of a wreck of a 60 year old CU but I don't see what the major issue is, actually looks fairly neat given the amount of circuits you have. (Obviously there's a bit of mix and match of makes given the additions. Although whoever put in the single Hager rather than taking the time to source the readily available ABB would annoy me.)

If you really do want to go ahead and 'upgrade' it to the newest regs, if you do manage to find a REC who will even quote for it, make sure you're sitting down when you get the price, it'll be in the thousands, not hundreds. That's not a quick job either so you'll potentially be without power for a good while also. And you might still get a REC who isn't as 'neat' as that Artisan lad and possibly end up with something that looks worse.

If you do have genuine safety concerns then by all means get a full inspection done (will cost a few hundred), but in general my advice would be to save yourself a lot of cost and hassle for limited gain and don't fix what's not broken.

jasgrif11

Ok noted. I'll put the cover back on. Thanks All