Why spend a load of money on a complete Twin Spot Emergency Light fitting replacement if you can just replace the inverter on your Twin Spot Emergency Light. We sell replacement Inverter PC boards for your twin spot emergency light fitting that will work with both halogen and LED fittings. The board works with the standard two 12 Volt (1.2Ahto 7.0Ah) sealed lead acid battery.

3 Year Warrenty (just send back and we will send you a replacement)

Price: £19.99 inc VAT
Postage free

Wiring a consumer unit unit is a task that should be undertaken by a competent electrician and is not an easy task as it involves many wires from different circuits to be connected and labelled. All circuits in a consumer unit should be properly identified and labelled up.

Initially he would do a visual test of the electrical installation to look for any omissions on the installation before starting his physical tests with his test equipment.

One of the key checks involves checking that all exposed conductive parts and extraneous conductive parts are bonded and is connected to the Main Earth Terminal (MET) to ensure that they are all at equipotential. Electric shock occurs when current flows from one part to another. Equipotential thus means that current can not flow from one part to another due to the fact that they are at the same voltage, that being 0V.

An earth fault loop impedance test is carried out to ensure that all circuits are connected to the main earth terminal and ultimately that your electrical wiring is connected to the electricity suppliers earth. Not having an earth on a circuit could be detrimental and can lead to electric shock if a fault had to occur on a faulty appliance or fitting.

Other tests involves testing the insulation of the wiring to make sure there is no damaged cables or loose connections that could short out to earth or neutral that can also cause electrical shock and nuisance tripping of the MCB (miniature circuit breaker).

We had the MCB (Miniature Circuit Breaker) for the ground floor sockets tripping out in the consumer unit (distribution board) and would not reset when attempting to do so. As none of us in the house are electrically inclined we where forced to call out an emergency electrician to come solve and fix the problem as soon as possible seeing that the kitchen sockets was on the same circuit and that meant that the fridge and freezer was not operating. If not solved as soon as possible we would have been forced to throw out a lot of food the next morning.

Unfortunately because this happened in the evening after 6pm this was classed as an emergency call-out and higher rates was to apply. Just for the call-out and first hour of work done by the electrician came to £90. Thereafter it was to be £60 an hour. The electrician arrived within an hour and started his fault finding on the electrical installation of that faulty circuit. First he started unplugging all the plugs that was plugged into sockets on the circuit. As he was doing this he called us over to the living room and showed us the fault he immediately spotted while going around each socket on the circuit. There was a multi plug socket adaptor lying under one of the central heating radiators that was drenched in water. The rusty radiator was leaking and so happens to have been right over the multi-plug socket adaptor. He unplugged the adaptor and with his first attempt was successful in resetting the MCB.

If we where just a little bit more clued-up and a bit ventures we could have done this basic fault finding ourselves without needing to know “how to wire a house” and saved £90.

By doing a quick search online I learnt a few things in a very short time. Key things to know about installing outdoor lighting is that using extra low voltage (ELV) lights will make it much more simple to install than standard Low Voltage 230v ones. You don’t need to use a Residual Current Device (RCD) to protect the circuit as ELV is a save voltage below 110v. Commonly 12v for outdoor lights. The best cable to use is Steel wired armoured cable (SWA) as it has the best protection against impacts by items like spades used in the garden. Using waterproof junction boxes is essential and if burying the cable under ground it needs to be in suitable ducting and a recommended depth of 2 ft in the ground.

Another good idea is to feed your circuit from a fused spur on an existing circuit in the house. Make sure that the fuse in the spur is no more than 5A.

After a year’s use and good operation, the outdoor lights started to trip out the Residual Current Device (RCD) in the consumer unit. This not only tripped the outdoor lights but all the lights on the ground floor. This was a real hassle and problem to the whole household! Where to start looking for the fault. At the time I did not realise that the fault was with the outdoor lights. As I’m not an electrician I had to call in the help of one.

He immediately started by switching off all light switches and said the most obvious culprit normally is the fittings with the most exposure to the elements and that it would be unlikely to be a fault with the actual electrical wiring. He disconnected the outdoor garden lights from the internal lights and attempted to reset the RCD. The RCD reset and thus the fault was with the outdoor lights.

After a close inspection of each light fitting he pointed out that the only lights that appeared to have any visual signs of damage from water ingress was the ones underneath the wooden bench. He removed the covers and dried out the fittings. Once done he re-instated the circuit and did not find any fault on it.

The electrician replaced these fittings with more robust ones and reconnected the outdoor circuit. This learnt me that having outdoor lights fitted requires more expensive and robust fittings and skimping on these will cause more aggravation further down the line.

During the test you are allowed to use your BS7671:2009 IEE Wiring Regulations hand book for referencing meaning its an open book test. The best advice is to keep tags inside the book at key points in order to quickly reference to the book during the test as you are only given 60 minutes to do the test in.

Its a good idea to get hold of some past 17th edition exam papers to test yourself on and exercise with before the main examination. Many of the test questions are re-occurring questions from past 17th edition examination papers and using these past exam papers will help you prepare.