Meter

In a recent post, (Help with breaker box, please)it was mentioned if the poster needed to replace the main breaker, he would have to pull the meter.I suppose in the USA you have to call the utility for this, but here, I do it mostly myself, because usually the meter's plomb (seal)is missing.One guy (albanian)even replaced the meter's fuse (!!!!)not with another fuse, but he short-circuited it with a piece of wire.Another albanian, did the same to the main fuse of the house (blow type), and after I replaced a receptacle and a short-circuit occcured, the result was that the meter's fuse blew, and I spent f****ng half an hour to open the meter box, because the screws were stuck.And all that because these bloody albanians don't want to pay 60 f****ng cents to buy a new fuse!Sometimes I think I live in the third world or latin america.

Reply to
Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
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In the UK, the incoming supply goes first through the supplier's main cutout (normally a 100A fuse) and then through the meter. In order to cut the power, for example if you need to replace your consumer unit (customer's fuse box, or panel in the US), in theory, the supplier comes along, breaks their seal and removes their fuse. When you are ready, they replace the fuse and reseal.

What happens in practice is they will often tell you to break the seal and remove the fuse. Sometimes they attend to replace and reseal the fuse, but mostly they don't and the main fuse doesn't get resealed. I spoke to one of the supply companies about this a couple of years ago, and they said they would much rather people broke the seal and pulled out the fuse than tried to replace their consumer unit with the meter tails live, which they are aware happens because people are concerned about breaking the seal. However, they look on breaking the seal on the meter much more seriously, and you shouldn't do that. Some of the companies will now come and fit a main switch (in some cases free of charge) between the meter and consumer unit if you ask.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

I had a situation a few years back where my brother had stuck a chisel through the ring main. This knocked out the main boards fuse, and made a mess of his chisel.

After spending about half an hour on the phone to his service provider I finally got told it was going to be a couple of days before they could get anyone out to change the fuse.

I told them not to bother, I cut the seal and replaced the fuse myself. To this day he still has not heard anything from them about the seal being broke, even though the meter has been read several times.

It did come in handy though when I changed his consumer unit a few weeks back, just had to pull the main fuse. No need to struggle getting them live tails out of the old unit and into the new one :)

sQuick..

Reply to
sQuick

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