Meter tails

[paul b b]

Hi all,

This is a question on meter tails.

a guy rewired my house about 6 years ago. as i have been studying i hve been looking at my ccu and noticed that i have 16mm2 going from the meter to a henly block and 25mm2 from the henly block to the ccu.

should this not bre 16mm2 too?

thanks

paul

 

[rainydays]

It all depends upon the size of your service fuse, the guy may have used henly blocks so that he did not have to break the service fuse seal.

 

[paul b b]

the fuse is seal is broken, though i have not looked at the fuse its self (cant be botherd to reset clocks etc) it has 60A on the cover.

does this mean that it's ok?

thanks

 

[Andy™]

just because it says a rating on cover, dont expect that to be the fuse. its often replaced with whatever they have. also, the 60A may be the max fuse it can take. it could well have a 40A. only way to know for definite is to remove the fuse

 

[SPECIAL LOCATION]

Hi all,This is a question on meter tails.

a guy rewired my house about 6 years ago. as i have been studying i hve been looking at my ccu and noticed that i have 16mm2 going from the meter to a henly block and 25mm2 from the henly block to the ccu.

should this not bre 16mm2 too?

thanks

paul

In an ideal world 25mm may be better,

(personally I would have swapped the lot over for 25mm rather than messing around with Henley's)

But I doubt if it is any SERIOUS safety issue.

What is the Realistic max demand of the installation?

Are there are noticeable signs of overheating / melting around the tails.

There are loads of properties still with 16mm tails.. very short run, in free open air, (not buried in insulation?). No probs!

The bigger area of concern I may have is ...

Are ALL of the screw terminals tight?

Loose terminals can cause nasties on the overheating & melting side of things!

 

[Theorysparky]

how many times do you see 16mm from main fuse to meter and 25mm from meter to cu.

it will be fine

 

[Blue Fox]

I always fit 25mm tails, but quite often henley block from 16mm tails from meter and 25mm tails from there to cu. The reason I do this is so I don't have to cut the seals on the meters, I think if the fuse seals are cut and there has been a cu change then its not a problem but dno may get a bit upset with meter seals cut.

 

[Andy™]

i think the main seal there bothered about is to the internals of the meter. not so much the connections (but then it depends on who notices seals removed)

 

[Blue Fox]

i think the main seal there bothered about is to the internals of the meter. not so much the connections (but then it depends on who notices seals removed)

Hello Andy,

What I wouldn't want is for a customer to get a load of grief because there meter seals have been cut and they get accused of stealing as they could have branched out of the incoming and bypass the meter. If no-one has ever known of any grief with removing these seals then I may begin to do that and save on a henley block.

Just on a side note to that, I'm live in and do most of my work in an edf area where getting anything done like an isolator fitted is a near impossibilty, however did a cu in a EON area a couple of weeks ago, said to the homeowner to give eon a call and ask about an isolator. He phoned me the following day and said they were coming the following week and it was free of charge - I nearly fell over!!

 

[Andy™]

depends who you speak to for what answer you get. i normally remove meter seal if its in my way. sometimes re-seal (bit a steel wire and a 1.5mm crimp). never had any problems

 

[Blue Fox]

Would make life easier, I already always reseal the main fuse - bought some from ebay which do the job pretty well, so may begin doing that from now on

 

[OilBeDamned]

Cut the seal on the meter for change of tails and on the cut out fuse if no 2 pole switch is fitted after the meter, just call and ask for a re-seal.

There wont be any grief to come of it, generally they wont even bother coming out to reseal it.

As AndyC says its only really the seal to the meter inner workings they bother about as on the old analogue meters these are where they can be tampered with.

Up here in Scotland, Scottish Power has been fitting double pole switches for after the meter so if your doing a cu change you dont need to go into any of their equipment other than the unsealed side of the double pole switch.

 

[jl-heating]

i always cut the seal and never had a problem.

 

[wozz]

was trying to cut the seal today and broke the plastic loop on top of the fuse, o well

i was going to re seal, aswel!

 

[batty]

was trying to cut the seal today and broke the plastic loop on top of the fuse, o welli was going to re seal, aswel!

Seal it at the bottom then.

Batty

 

[Andy™]

might not have to seal points

 

[Blue Fox]

was trying to cut the seal today and broke the plastic loop on top of the fuse, o welli was going to re seal, aswel!

ha ha I've done that before, broke the whole loop clean off. There was enough in the bottom seal to pull the fuse then so did that, done the job then super glued the loop back on again and looked like it had never been touched!!

 

[Andy™]

anyone had the seals put in wrong so you can easily open metal terminal cover, remove fuse etc, and still put back without any sign of tampering!?

 

[green-hornet]

Yes I have come across this quite often, its possible to remove the fuse carrier and replace without breaking any seal.

Not that I would even try this!!!

Well I would never admit it lol