You rotten lot of buggers, poor old Scottie will not be able to sleep tonight scaring the crap out of him with tales of woe and doom.
My house still has cartridge fuses in both fuse boxes and a leakage trip on the one on the right. No the other right, sometimes called the Left, I have owned this house for 26 years and have never had the electrics upgraded and if i can get away with it, I never will (Tight old Bastard here)
If i have a light bulb blow anywhere in the house it pops the trip out so I guessing the system is still sensitive enough to protect me from most hazards.
I don't go around sticking my tongue in the power points or my willy in a light bayonet.
So all is good, I have never had any issues with the electrics and at one point it would not allow me to reset the trip and i did not know what had caused it to trip out, so I got a mate (Sparkie) around to check it out and it was the bulb in my daughters sewing machine light had blown and was stopping the trip from resetting, he removed the bulb took about 1.5 hours to find the problem, he knew it was on the ring main. it transpired my daughter had pushed her sewing machine under her bed in her room and knocked the bulb holder and bent it over as she did and it popped out the trip, and of course the trip would not reset until the thing had been unplugged.
I asked him about upgrading my fuse boards and he said 'it's fine', it has just tested itself by behaving in the manor it was intended in the first place.
Also he said that some of theses consumer unit replacements are a great job for a Sparkie to do when things are quiet in the winter and you can not get on with stuff outside, he just smiled and said you will need to update them when you come to sell the property or it will reflect on the price you will get, its a way that the potential buyer can knock you down 5 or 6 grand because the electrics are 'NOT SAFE'
Sell my little house is the man mad