When we talk about electrics, a fuse is a safety device that provides overcurrent protection to an electrical circuit. Overcurrent protection meaning what happens when a circuit contains too much current. This electric current will flow through the circuit and into the fuse, which has a metal wire or strip that melts when an amount of current flows through it. This melting is what happens when you “blow a fuse”.
When a fuse is blown, you need to replace it. This usually becomes a difficult task of sourcing the right fuse for your, now ancient, fuse box. From there you can replace it yourself if you’re confident enough with electrics, or you can pay for it to be installed.
As you can see, blowing a fuse is a hassle and not what anyone wants to be spending their time doing. That’s why we recommend anyone who has a fuse box to replace their ancient fuse box with one of our modern MCB (Miniature Circuit Breaker) Fuse boards.
MCBs are safer because they can accurately monitor the amperage of a circuit before flicking, where fuses can be unreliable because they can sometimes withstand more current than they’re supposed to. The metal strip can take too long to melt.
Our Fuse boards are also fitted with RCD (residual current devices) These are an extra safety device because they ensure that whole sections of your home’s sockets are shut down if they detect any imbalance of current. This is to stop electrical problems before they begin, they rarely flip but are just an extra safety precaution included in recent years.
A Modern Fuse board from Fuseboard.ie is easily hundreds of times safer than any of the older fuse board models installed in most Irish homes today.