Updating Consumer Board with RCBO

If you're planning on having electrical work carried out in your home, then the new electrical circuits, or altered circuits will need to meet current guidelines. Current guidelines require that, for various reasons, most circuits in your house are required to be protected by an RCD or RCBO rated to 30mA. Economically, it can work out less expensive to have a new split load board installed where multiple circuits are protected by one RCD, than to install multiple RCBOs in place of the far cheaper existing MCBs in your board. There may be RCBOs available for your board, but an electrician would need to check, or you may be able to find out by asking an electrical distributor and providing photos or model numbers. You are not required to make these upgrades if you are not carrying out other work, but the earth fault protection provided by these measures has been proven to substantially reduce the risk of electrical hazards in the home, and you will not be able to achieve a satisfactory rating on an Electrical Installation Condition Report until this potentially dangerous situation is remedied. The length of time required to do the work will vary greatly due to conditions such as the number of circuits involved, but in most domestic situations you should expect between one half or a full day to replace and test a board. It is generally considered a good idea to have a condition report carried out before having work like this carried out, so that your electrician can advise you of any other potential hazards in you installation. See here for more information http://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/mediafile/100423440/Best-Practice-Guide-1-Issue-3-.pdf This work is notifiable to building control, and you should expect both an electrical installation certificate and a building control notification certificate following the work. These should only be issued by fully competent installers. Hope that helps.

Second what Deacon says, if it's the Wylex board that we're thinking of, then it's impossible to actually get any RCBOs in on the unprotected side due to the neutral bar. As far as what Ravenscroct says, only new work needs to comply to current regs, there is nothing that states that we have to bring the entire circuit up to current regs. And lack of RCD protection isn't considered "potentially dangerous" unless there are sockets which may be used for outdoor equipment, or for any circuit in a special location (bathrooms, shower rooms etc) where supplementary bonding isn't in place. And if those two are ok, then you can be granted a Satisfactory EICR, regardless of whether or not all other circuits are RCD/rcbo protected.

That's if the RCBO's now will fit in a consumer unit of that age. My experience on this is no as the neutral bar prevents it. Get a sparks in to have a look as its really hard to call on the Internet.