As all electricians should be aware the 18th edition is coming out in 2018 and will need to be fully compliant by january 2019. However general public may not be aware of this and some may question your pricing and estimations when quoting to do works to the 18th Edition. Here are some short videos by ECA about the proposed changes that should be coming in place.
To summarise the above video, all sockets must be RCD protected and also we must now RCD protect all lighting circuits, which I assume most electricians was already doing due to the cables being less than 50mm in wall cavities.
The use of ARC detector devises will now be required to be installed inside consumer units, these will however raise the price of fuseboard upgrades and more than likely increase the size of the new metal clad consumer units.
All cables are to be of a certain euro class, which all reputable wholesalers will already stock, for example CEF already stock Euro class cable.
The main point to be made above about the alleged proposal is the point about cables being protected against premature collapse. This means that all cables are to be secured or fastened with metal or firerated materials. Depending on what manufacturers create in order to tackle this regulation this may mean re-wires and installs will take alot longer which yes your correct means more money for the customer. The reason being more floor boards will need to be lifted, more time spent clipping and securing cables and higher costing materials. Hopefully a fast solution is created by one of the leading manufacturers.
Another point to be made is that no circuit/circuits can be protected by a 30mA RCD that exceeds a down current of 10mA. This may lean toward more installs being backed up by RCBO's rather than Dual RCD Boards, this will dramatically change the cost of Consumer unit upgrades as a RCBO is almost 10x the cost of a standard MCB.
Thirdly an important note to make is that they are now requiring that all installs are required to have an Earth electrode to back up the earth provided by the distributor. Our thinking in this is that for any reason the cable breaks down or becomes faulty outside of your property your own earth provided by this proposed Earth Electrode would then protect your install.
This video is pretty straight forward and only really applies to electricians. Inspection and testing section has been revamped and test certs have changed. A point to customers is that after 2019 begins ensure that all Test Certifications are 18th Edition compliant
The main points to be made in this video are that changes to the regulations in caravan parks have changed. Cables to be buried deeper at 600mm and posts to be taller. All sockets are to be 30mA which has been picked up on in a earlier video. This video and proposed changes are mainly aimed at specific genres of electrics and if you own or work in any of these from the video reading up on the changes would be highly advised.
This is a brand new section in the regulations and is all about Energy efficiency. This is basically to cut the costs for the customer and also make the install more eco friendly. If you work with industrial installs or own an industrial unit i would recommend you read into this more as the Harmonics and Power factors would apply mainly to you, and also peak times with metering and charges for going over the threshold of metering tarrifs.
However if you are Domestic and some commerical this can be met mainly by checking energy ratings on appliance to be installed within the property. Also a major fator of making your property more energy efficient would be to ditch the old halogen and filliment lamps and swap all light fittings and lamps to LED fittings. Not only will this decrease your bills over the year but will make your properties energy rating improve.
Another proposed idea for improving energry ratings is to use a larger cable size for the suggested circuit. This works as the cables can heat upto 70degree's on a normall install. If you increase the CSA of the cable this increases the flow in the cable therefor lowering the energy consumtion of the circuit. How much the customer would notice this on their bills is yet to be calculated, but word of software to calculate this is in the pipeline.
Suggested cable size changes would be lighting circuits from 1.0mm to 1.5mm . And also Radial circuits wired in 2.5mm cable to be upgraded to 4.0mm. The initial outlay for the install would be slightly higher however experts are saying you would save this in bills over the years and have a safer install.
Thank you for taking your time to read the above changes and i hope they helped you with any queries.
Mr. Perry McGowan