This client came to us when they were getting their electric and gas meters updated to smart meters. The meter engineer had told them there was a reverse polarity issue that needs rectifying before he went any further.

When we went to take a look, the first thing we noticed when we opened the fuse box up was this glaringly obvious meter tail that goes into the main switch - burnt to a crisp!

We notified the client this wasn't very safe for continued use, and that this particular model of fuse board had since been long discontinued, making replacements quite hard to come by. You can tell by the discolouration of the plastic where the meter tail enters the main switch that this terminal would like be - welded shut and would no longer loosen or tighten - and the plastic would be quite brittle from long term exposure to well-above-normal temperatures.

The client insisted it looked like a fusebox upgrade was on the cards and commissioned the works that very day, after we had done a little bit of homework and provided him with a quote which detailed the scope of the work we were looking to carry out in order to get rectify this safety hazard.

The scope of works included:
A standard health check on the electrics (20% EICR)
A full fuseboard upgrade to current regulations (18th edition; RCBO loaded, SPD, see more about the boards we fit here)
Unfortunately we didn't have much preparation for a silky smooth fuseboard upgrade (see more information about how we tee-up our fuse board upgrades under normal circumstances), so this ended up being a long day, where we had parts of the electrics that weren't behaving themselves, and required fault finding and rectification (which we covered under out Quick Win Scheme!)
But, all in all, this was a successful day, and a successful project.

The client now benefits from that all important RCD protection, with a huge amount of redundancy (if one circuit plays up, you only lose that particular circuit, not all of the power to the entire house in one go), and the client got their smart meters fitted which means they can now top up their meters without having to run to the shops!