Emergency Consumer Unit Replacement — Notting Hill

Electrical emergencies do not keep office hours. The call came at 9pm on a Tuesday evening in January. The client — a homeowner in a Victorian conversion flat on Lansdowne Road — had been watching television when she heard a buzzing sound from the hallway. On investigation, she found the consumer unit was warm to the touch, there was a distinct smell of burning plastic, and one of the fuse carriers had visible discolouration around the terminal.

She did the right thing: she turned off the main switch and called RARE. She did not try to reset anything, she did not ignore it, and she did not wait until morning. A buzzing, warm consumer unit with a burning smell is a fire risk that requires immediate professional attention.

The challenge for RARE's emergency electrician was twofold. First, the existing unit needed to be safely assessed and isolated — a burnt connection on a main switch can mean the switch itself is compromised, and operating it could be dangerous. Second, the client was without power in January, which meant no heating, no lighting, and no hot water. The job was not just a technical exercise — it was a welfare issue that needed resolving as quickly as safely possible.

RARE's emergency electrician arrived at the property at 10:30pm — 90 minutes after the call. The first action was a safe isolation assessment: the incoming supply was checked at the service head, the burnt consumer unit was photographed from a safe distance for insurance documentation, and the supply was isolated at the service head isolator — not at the compromised main switch, which was not safe to operate.

The assessment confirmed the diagnosis: a catastrophic connection failure on the main switch neutral terminal. The terminal screw had loosened over time — a common failure mode in older consumer units that have never been properly torqued during installation — and the resulting high-resistance connection had been generating heat until the insulation began to melt. The unit was beyond repair. A full replacement was the only safe option.

RARE's emergency van carries a stock of the most common consumer unit sizes, and a suitable 18th Edition dual-RCD unit with the correct number of ways was available on the van. The old unit was carefully disconnected — with the burnt section photographed and retained for insurance purposes — and the new unit was mounted, all circuits connected to individual RCBOs, and the full installation tested and certified. A Type 2 surge protection device was included as standard.

By 1am, the client had power restored, the heating was back on, and a full EICR certificate had been issued for the new installation. The insurance documentation — including photographs of the burnt unit, a written assessment of the failure cause, and the EICR for the replacement — was emailed to the client the following morning.