Where is the Fuse Board?

Where is the fuse board?

This may appear an absurd question – however we often get calls to identify where the fuse board or consumer unit is, especially after circuits have failed, for example the lighting circuit has tripped.

Likely places to find them are:

• Under the stairs
  
  
• In a hall cupboard
  
  
• In a communal hall cupboard
  
  
• In a bedroom cupboard
  
  
• In a boiler cupboard
  
  
• In an immersion cupboard
  
  
• In a block of flats, they could be in the hallway communal cupboard (just as you walk in), under the stairs, or even in a locked cupboard.
  
  
• New built flats, the consumer unit/fuse box could be in a cupboard adjacent to your flat. (You may find that the cupboard is locked).
  
  
• In the corner of a living room, within some bookshelves, or within a low down cupboard.
  
  
• In a kitchen cupboard
  
  
• In the garage
  
  
• In some electrical boxes mounted on the outside of the house
  
  
• In a bedroom
  
  
• In a cellar
  
  
• In the garage, on the wall

The best clue is that it has to be normally within 3 m of where the electrical meter is. So you could be looking on the outside of a property for a big white box. (One of the white boxes could be for the gas meter – this could be obvious because there are copper pipes or a yellow pipe leaving this box. If you have an electrical meter on the outside of the house you can be rest assured that more than likely the fuse boxes will be within 3 m as this is regulatory, unless there has been some form of isolation switch installed in this box, so the fuse box or consumer unit is further away.

When moving into a new property to yourselves one of the first jobs to do is to find the consumer unit, there is nothing worse than piling up all your belongings into a corner, to find that the consumer unit is hidden behind it and you have an electrical problem such as the circuit trips.

At Bright Spark, having had over 40 years experience within the team of electricians, and have visited over 6000 customers in the last 15 to 20 years, around the area we can normally guide you to where the consumer unit is, having visited similar homes even in the same street as yours.

Please do not feel embarrassed to give the office a call at Bright Spark, and even by using Google Street view, we can often identify the possible locations of your consumer unit/fuse board.

All electrical installations are to the Electrical Regulations BS7671, with Bright Spark being on the Electrical Safety Register, Part P compliant, and rest assured members of the NICEIC.

 

External Electrical Installation