Vintage UK fuse-box with rewireable fuses.

Is this your old board Clive, which the BG one in a recent video replaced?

MarcT

I love these videos! I have no clue about British wiring and the insight is as always super great and valuable.

Michael Thompson

When you suddenly introduced a ball of 'blue asbestos' my heart rate jumped! Panic over once you explained it was just a model created from your tumble dryer. Phew. As far as the Wylex consumer unit is concerned, it is interesting how much there is to learn about something so familiar. A lot of thought went into its design - apart from the plasma thing - didn't think anyone would leave the lid off did they...

Keith Miller

I wonder how many people did that and then saw all the lights dip before smoke started pouring off the wiring.

Big Clive

The old 15A round pin plugs are still routinely used in theatres to indicate dimmed circuits. It also means that with noi local fuses a fault will always go back to a known location at the dimmer rack. The house I was born in had fuses on live and neutral. That welder is a beast. If in good condition these will blow modern simple welders out the water for reliability and duty cycle.

Big Clive

A quick "fix" to a blown fuse back in the day of the round screw in type was to remove fuse and place a penny in hole and screw back in. At least so I was told by an older brother. I just barely remember them in one childhood home.

"vintage" my house still has one sat next to a Yorkshire electricity board meter that's been around the clock at least once!

Matthew Halfpenny

I'd just like to say that you can easily upgrade these rewirable fuses to resettable circuit breakers individually. They are Wylex branded and sold in Wickes and on eBay etc.

Gadgetman

Big Clive it would be interesting if you could mention old 15amp round pin domestic plugs and that in the past electricity distribution was a local thing and that it could be DC or AC [2] I was told that is whey they used a UNIVERSAL motor for early hoovers ? Some of my granddads books show systems were two fuses were in some domestic appliances LIVE and NEUTRAL lines, I might still have the book if you needed and image. &lt;going even="" further="" off="" sorry="" topic=""&gt;Very early on (? 1930s) he purchased a MUREX welder it was the size of a chest freezer and was regarded as portable [1] since it had wheels. When it was plugged into 3 phase two of the meters went slowly backwards; the local council had forced him to ask Murex to rewire it and this was the result. My grandfather would get call outs to repair large electrical motors in the local mills that would often shear the drive shaft and he would repair it in situ and have the machine running in a few hours. [1] it was oil filled. It looked a bit like this but older, twice I helped repair commutator ? studs for different power settings. <a href="https://www.cottandco.com/en/lots/murex-330-amp-oil-filled-arc-welder" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.cottandco.com/en/lots/murex-330-amp-oil-filled-arc-welder</a> [2] I did find this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Act_1947" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Act_1947</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-nationalisation_UK_electric_power_companies" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-nationalisation_UK_electric_power_companies</a> John&lt;/going&gt;

John Harrison

Thanks Clive.

Nuts 'n' Proud

Foil from a kit-kat wrapper was always a favourite.

Our house had those ceramic isolators in the roof and under the floors. It was replaced with fibre covered wire in metal conduit. Now we just have the modern stuff strung through the joists, just not as neat looking.

The husband of my mums best friend had worked on ships as an electrical engineer for a long time, he died from asbestosis. There was no compensation as he couldn’t prove which ship/company was the cause of his particular case.

The bottle fuses are pretty rare in homes. They tend to be found in older European factory equipment though.

Big Clive

Never even HEARD of replaceable fuse wire. The oldest circuits I've ever seen, single wire on ceramic insulators nailed to joists retro fitted into 150 year old farmhouses, still had screw in style fuses in the distribution box. But then, in Kansas a 150 year old house is very old. You british types probably think of that as neo modern.

James Boatright

Crikey, my last house (left a year ago) had one of these, it had no cover on the fuses for the 13 years I lived there. But then, I'd swapped most fuses for the plugin 'circuit breakers' by the end.

mikenco

Our house (early 1980s in Ireland) has a bottle fuse consumer unit, D-style going by the above comment. It has an RCD and this usually trips before any fuse blows as most appliances seem to fail with a ground fault. Before we replaced our light bulbs with LED, we were considering replacing it with a circuit breaker consumer unit as we were fed up replacing the lighting fuses that regularly blew. Older CFLs usually failed by shorting, sometimes stinking up the room with a burned plastic smell and GU10s also seemed to blow a fuse each time one fused. After about 5 years of replacing all our bulbs with LEDs, we've only had a single lighting circuit fuse blow that I can recall and the odd socket circuit fuse when too many cooking appliances were running simultaneously.

Seán Byrne

Good grief! That’s a modern one compared to what I grew up with in a real Georgian house that had electricity added to it at some point. The fuse receivers and fuses were porcelain. I recall several fuses had significant chips of porcelain missing as they were inevitably dropped while threading the wire etc. Color coding was non existent. I recall many shocks as a kid as I explored electrical stuff like radios. I also never quite got the live/neutral thing until enough shocks from switches prompted me to have a chat with the electrician one day. He explained all. I live in Texas now and 115v is a mere tingle compared to a whack from 230! I’m amazed I am still alive but I did develop some good “handle it gingerly” techniques! Avoiding strategies were used in place of real knowledge!

So what ancient era is this from? :-) Did you ever use D-style fuses in the UK, or did you go directly from weird stuff to modern circuit breakers? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60269#D_type_fuses" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60269#D_type_fuses</a>

I had to look up VDE. Sounds like something cured by penicillin.

Mark Trombley

I grew up in a flat with a wooden plug fuse box. My Mom hung her kitchen knives on the access door.

I had a fuse box just like that one in my first house. I became quite adept at replacing the fuse wire.

Wrong size of wire? A nail is much more effective!