How To Wire a Switchboard (Part 1)

wait as guys there's a video you've all been waiting for out of war in a switchboard first thing you want to note about these you want one that's a sufficient size for the house that you're installing it in this one here is a 30 way each bar corresponds to a 15 way and what I mean by way is how many single pole breakers you can put in there so on the bottom line here I can put 15 on and on the top line open 15 any remembering that our CDs take up two slots so here goes the our CDs are we worrying them into this house yeah what you want to make sure on these ones is that they've got the we ac/dc symbol there don't buy some Chinese crap that doesn't it's not compliant New Zealand or Australia before I go through all this with you I'll go through the parts all the stuff that comes in the switchboard when you buy so what we've got here first is some bus bars now these are simply two guns switchboard they go under your breakers a none bRCD just like that so that power comes into the RCD goes through the bottoms of all these breakers and then goes out to your circuits at the top of them next thing it may not take throw it on the main and the board it's not illegal not to but it's best practice to do it screws they're pretty self-explanatory we mount the cover on the switchboard sometimes you don't end up using these because they're pretty crap to line up with the wee holes in here so it seems to just use some weird drive super screws these wee links here these uses an Emmy in line when you've got your earth and neutral bars together and the switchboard here I've customized it myself so a lot of the time you come up with bars these bars here down the bottom but because this is a retro foot house and all the cables are currently cut to length I think we're going to struggle to get a cable that's long enough to come down at the bottom here so I've moved all the bars to the top that there's going to be my neutral bar that's my bigger but these five here are for our seedy bars yeah so for our CD if you main neutral coming in off the neutral bar and then the same side that goes out to your circuits go out to the RCD bar and then all of those circuits neutrals come in to these now there is another way of doing them using these wee things you can actually plug those into the neutral and the bottom of our CD and then your neutrals for your sub-circuits just come straight out of these I have hardly used these I don't think they're as tidy as doing it in switchboard like this but it can save a lot of time these are just covers for if you don't use the entire 15 ways and you have gaps between your breakers just grab some of these and they just push in there like that right this video is going to be recorded in three parts first part here will be setting up the switchboard what I'll do is I'll do all of the wiring for the phases and the neutrals or the RCD wiring and here before I actually install the board now the breakers you're going to want so it's been through the LCDs we're gonna put all of our sockets on 16 amp breakers in our lighting circuits on success the other thing is when you upgrade into our CDs it is sometimes hard in the houses that aren't you to put your lighting circuits on the our CDs so all the times Mutual's across throughout the house the other ones that i've got here 32 amp changing 30 amp from the oven make sure it's wide and 6 mil fits knots right down to the 25m 63m4 the main switch and that's the main switch disconnector that's not a 63 amp MCB MCB and circuit breaker exactly the same thing just the M stands for miniature now we've got 20 and that's going to be for sub main which is the garage fade so I've got another switch board in the garage and that one I'll be upgrading for a surface mount board so a bit different to this one but I'll do a video on that at some point and then we've got our hot water circuit now these ones don't have to be on our CD because they fix wide appliances or their sub mains for your circuits on our CDs you want to have a maximum of three sub circuits per our CD try not to exceed the 40 amps here so we've got two six teens in the six so that's one light circuit and two soffit circuits the other thing is you want to split your light circuits up okay if you can get them on an RCD you don't want them all on the same our CD that's an idiot move because what happens that when you get a fault is that the RCD trips and then all your light circuits in the house are out so you've got no light in anywhere but if you've got them on different ones then obviously only a portion of the house will be without lights okay I'll go show you the old switchboard so there's a switchboard here that'll be roughing down thrown it and burn what I want to do with that switchboard out there is flush mount it so it looks nice it's flush and with the jib here the only way to feasibly do it is to rip the skirting off and then then we a better job stopping and painting if it was for a customer cheapest way is to do a surface mount with us on top of us or not but a surface mount you'd have it sticking off the wall about six inches you know so the doors open out here right so next thing you want to go and count up what you got examine all the circuit and write them down on a bit of paper these hot water switches here they just go they don't count as a circuit breaker because their circuit breaker is elsewhere either that one or that one up there that's the one on site so what I've got here on this card is all of the breakers off that board what rating the breaker the fuses were now these I believe a socket circuits but there's a 5 amp one here unsure about and I know there's a spa circuit what I want to do is just go around and try and figure out what breaker goes to what circuit so what I found was that 5 amps just slide in circuit is first thing you want to put on main sweat bottom left I always put it in on the bottom we we are ever it's feasible as I'll Sam I like to have the main switch on the bottom left or sometimes it's not feasible and you've got to put it up at the top as long as the location of us is under two meters you're absolutely fine now they are CDs that you want for a normal domestic house are these 40 amp 30 milliamp rated are CDs so 63m pain switch next thing we've got is the oven putting on the 32 it is an induction cooktop and as supplied in sucks melt when you're putting your breakers in don't upright them at all visually with cable sizes and if you're not sure what's what's gear is on the tail end of the circuit 20 amp are we putting them for a sub main yeah be aware that these ones here are not going to be on an RCD 16 M from a hot water cylinder and then because I'm gonna be installing an alarm units own this house has got an alum unit I'll be getting rid of that one and installing a brand new one so I'll put in a 6 amp breaker for that so that one there's just gonna sit there it's not gonna get wide out to a circuit or anything at the moment now the RCD circuit so what I'll do is I'll see how many circuits are in the house so we've got three lighting circuits we've got three six seven eight socket circuit so if we got eight socket circuits divided by 4 is 2 and then lighting this 3 so we need for our CDs in this house so what I want to do fill up this top row first I want to leave a get here in case I do decide in the future to run more circuits for different things that don't need to be on an RCD now as you can see I've grouped these up so I've gone to socket circuits of one lighting circuit per our CD you want to go 3 sub circuits for each a CD and try and keep it under the 40 amp rating of the our CD itself so as you can see I got two sixteens for socket circuits and six for the lighted circuit so we've got our three line in circuits - for socket so we just need two more socket circuit now I've got a spa and I'll be putting that on a 20 amp breaker I'm not sure what circuit it is yet but it will be one of these so I'm gonna make the spur on the bottom row here the other thing is I don't need this circuit breaker in here that is just for a spacer at the moment I might take down I might just leave it in there today's the sets right now what we're going to have is we're going to have the main earth coming into the earth bar here and all of the Earth's from every single circuit will be in there earth bar we're gonna have the main neutral coming into the neutral bar here and then all of the neutrals that go out to the RC days will screw into the our CDs and also the neutral of these circuits here will go into the neutral bar as well there will also be an Emmy in link between the main earth and the main neutral bar what you want and a domestic installation phase comes in and enter the main switch here and then it goes out on one of these bus bars to each one of these loops into the RCD here goes out to each one of these and it's the same on all the our CDs and then at the top of these goes out to your circuits and at the top of these ones here it goes out to your circuits the neutrals of the circuits on the RCD goes into each one of these and these are connected to the corresponding RC D you'll see what I mean if you're abused we know I wire them and another thing that I like to do is ring feed and I know it's a big thing in the UK where a lot of the circuits and the house are actually ring feared so say you have cable running and looping off three sockets there will be a second cable from the last socket that goes back to the switchboard and that the whole circuit is supplied from both ends so in the switchboards I do that where just to balance the load so that I've got a six mil running from the main switch to the RCD to the next one and then back to the main switch at the end and I'll show you guys what I mean with that so what you need for the wiring inside the switch as a six mil conduit wire read and black can just buy six ml TPS and peel it off or you can actually buy rolls of just the cause anyway I'll strip these back and make couple piles of them tweet so I've got some here now the majority at the time and I understood switchboards I put these in last I get all the wiring sorted out first cuz I got time on my hands I'm gonna be doing it this way first thing I always don't I always assume the main feed is going to be too short to come into the bottom of the main switch I always put it in the top here and then out at the bottom trim one of these bus bars down so I make these fires up now so on five there you sides-- out cut it down keep it flat so there's so it's not cut on an angle cut the plastic off there these bus bars here come with switchboards as well as you can see the surface area is quite a lot smaller than these ones that's why I prefer to use these thicker ones but these thin ones are actually really good because you can bend them and manipulate them away but when you've got circuit breakers in people's houses of different sizes because all my switch gears matching in here because it's all Schneider gear I won't be needing to manipulate any bus bars that one there's ready to go in but we're not gonna put up anything yet we've cut these other ones so we want four four four four so four four lengths of fours might just trim a wee bit off the edge here so the plastics not too bulky and when it sits under insulation there there's enough insulation on either side so it's 104 that's all of these sorted all we can do is put the RCD ones in now the left hand side of the RCD is the neutrals so we're not gonna worry about that now at the top here I'm gonna have my incoming feed and now at the bottom here and then add my feed out which supplies these breakers here so I can put one of these bus bars are cut down to four into the circuit there you want to use a proper posi driver there are certain breaker circuit breakers screwdrivers you can get by don't bother with those it's Grohmann and make sure that all your terminals are done uptight fight so fight them all one as you can see they do stick down a Weber and like the Kent parts which do fit on flush I'm not gonna dwell on their what I want to start off is the neutrals today is my cable yeah cut the bent end offer drip it back away but when you're putting cables into screw terminals know these ones up here you want to twist them up makes it stronger but when you're putting them into clamp terminals which are what's inside these so the screw screws two clamps together inside these breakers and are CD's you don't want to twist these up you want to have them flat so it compresses the copper just like that and there's more surface area used if you had them twisted up then it would only be touching the top but in the bottom but neutral here is gonna come out of the neutral bar at the top twister up and we'll trim it down slightly neutral bar so in the first slot here I'm gonna have reserved for the main neutral the swap he'll have reserved for in the inland don't over tighten these the old pull test every time and so what I'm gonna start with is I'm gonna bring the neutral down the side here I'm just gonna run it straight to the neutral here so you can see you get your finger under there bend it down on nice angle then correct the corner run it down the side i'll it down tuck it under the bar here so it's not visible cut it right there we've got my thumb now I'm not twisting these up throw it into the top you want to make sure that the clamps and these only clamp down onto the copper and not onto the insulation so just watch it every time you put one on do the old pull test now you've got to be aware with these our CDs is that you have the line on the same sides and here I have my line on the top which is your neutral end in your face and so the power from the main switch comes into the top as the power from the neutral bar comes into the top in the power out to the circuits at the bottom the neutral out of the circuits - these are seedy bars at the bottom if you have an imbalance in the RCD will trip as soon as you draw a load on that circuit as soon as you turn a light on or plug an appliance then it'll trip the RCD same again for each of these right so the neutral feeds are run as you can see the next thing I want to do is throw the neutral load side out onto each one of these are seedy bars so for this I'm gonna make this our CD one it's going to go to the our CD one bar here two three and four okay first thing I'm gonna do is do number one though with this one what I want to do is put the neutral in run up across and then straight up here into the bar now be aware that when there's switchboards installed on the wall and probably going to take a couple of these cables out up here just so I can get cables and behind and run them tightly to where I want to get them to screw it up character length this timing is going to go under the bar so just where it is now to those terminals there right now crank these screws up properly pull test every time you put a cable one do the pull test there goes one done number two here to our CD tone writes all those neutral loads are run all done to the RCD bars up here now I'm gonna throw a few cable ties in here I'll be throwing black ones in to match the color I'm going to throw one in here one in here and one in here to make it stay tidy over time so the cable ties around what I'll do is I'll cut them off now a good thing to do with these because once you've cut them off you can turn these tabs around and hide them behind the cables so they're not noticeable so I spun the tires round so it looks all tidy in there next I'm gonna want to do let's do our feeds and put our bar in here so I'm going to run feeder I'll loop the feed out into the top of each our CD and then loop it back into the main switch so the best way to start this is from the second point on so I'll be running the face cable from the bottom of this breaker here to the top of here that bar will go in there to complete the circuit and the final one will come into the bottom of us so go cable out here and a cable one here yes so you read cable here start on the stick and a CD here this one here I'll be running down to the bottom of this but screw it yeah not too tight just so it's holding it in place so you can manipulate it and then unscrew it and we'll put the second one in so cut this one to length probably to win my thumb oh sweet it down without pushing the other cables down strip the end off okay bug at us I'm gonna go get my cable strippers and that I'm over halfway through I decide to go and get my cable strippers out they are much easier for this sort of application where I've got them camera tripod here the board's there just to get into some tight spaces okay so that's really just slide in there when we've put the bar on now get the next end strip her off she how much easier that was one screw this one make sure they go in side-by-side not on top of each other that way the clamp will clamp down on them evenly and you won't get a loose cable in there and then screw it up now this face here we gun into the top of this breaker get down even with the other one [Music] Cutlass two lengths believe that with my thermos [Music] now let's end here won't coming out at the top well strip the end off before we put it on get my long nose pliers clean they're here like a nice load and throw it in here you want to get the next piece drop her off and cut it back a wee bit there's a bit long fur on the top with that one and we'll tighten it up yeah then loop the rest off-camera bringing the last one down to the bottom of this rodeo guys so all the feeds are run through all looked round the last thing that I need to do here is screw these two one one on either end and smash one of these bus bars underneath with them the other thing I'll be doing is checking the cable tie on the backs of these reeds just to keep them together and then line make it make it nice and tidy one thing you'll find these bus bars is the cable can only shut the cable can only set in front of it so you don't want to be putting the cable went under it so we'll do is we'll put this on first and then we'll set our cables in front of each terminal now we'll tighten it up gonna make sure these cables can go flat so it can clamp in the bus bar behind it as well you've clamped the outside one up do the old pull test make sure that the bar and the cables in there nice and by they want might help in this instance was claiming the second one own unclamping this one just so it pulls the bus bar into the bottom so you want to line these up so that the covers going to fit on nicely there's a bit bit at that time and nothing's coming out now get the front one on it's the bottom of the main switch now we'll work our way back from the middle one plant the bar on nice and tight to the old pull test it's good some they're firm tidy these loops up at the bottom so that completes step one basically how to see what up what I'll do quickly first throw these cable ties on and what I'll be using is some red cable ties to match the cable color so you can't see them so again with these cable ties we cutting them off and pushing them back down behind here so they keep it all together nice and tidy so cable ties our own now a couple of important fans first one is make sure that you copper is flush with the line at the top of the breaker so that you can't actually well barely see it the other thing is once you done manipulating the cables especially if it's two of them and one of these I mean also just go around and retighten them make sure they're tight still because what tends to happen is you get them on different angles they might not a clamp down flat when you're twisting around they might come loose so just go around and check it all again but that there is how to set up a switchboard to install and next video we'll be removing the old one and then throwing this new one and I will probably have to remove just these cables from the bars up here just to get cables and behind but we'll see what happens when I get into a

Channel: sparkydave

Views: 57,717

Rating: 4.85567 out of 5

Keywords: how to wire switchboard, switchboard, switch board, how to wire a switch board, changeover a switch board, replace switchboard, replace switch board, how to fit off switch board, fit off switchboard, fit off msb, wire up msb, main switch board wiring, main switch board, switchboard nz

Id: cGCkXtYhwd8

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2019