Consumer unit and circuit records: the file that saves you an hour on every visit
What goes into a distribution board record, why the single-line diagram isn’t enough, and how a history per installation cuts the time of every future job.
Every time you go back to an installation with no records, you start from scratch: you open the board, work out which circuit feeds what, test as you go. That’s half an hour to an hour, every time, that nobody is happy to pay for.
A board record solves exactly that. It isn’t the single-line diagram — it includes it, but goes further.
Why the single-line diagram isn’t enough
The single-line diagram shows the structure: what’s there and how it’s connected. It doesn’t tell you what was done last year, which RCD kept tripping for no reason, which circuit someone else added in a hurry, or where the junction box is that you spent half an hour hunting for last time.
The record adds time: what was done, when, by whom and with what result.
What it should contain
- Installation identity: address, floor, use of the premises, supply number.
- Supply characteristics: single-phase or three-phase, contracted capacity.
- Board: location, type, number of ways, spare ways for future expansion.
- Circuits: numbering, what each one feeds, conductor cross-section, type and rated current of the protective device.
- Residual current devices: how many, which circuits each one covers, rated sensitivity.
- Earthing system and the location of the equipotential bonding connections.
- History of work carried out, with date and description.
- Latest test results and the date of the next periodic inspection.
- Photos: the open board, the labelling, anything that can’t be seen once it’s closed up.
Labelling is part of the job, not an extra
A board with correctly labelled circuits saves time on every future job — yours or a colleague’s — and reduces risk. Photograph the labelling and add it to the record: stickers peel off, the photo stays.
The gain in numbers
A firm that goes back to familiar installations twice a week and saves forty minutes of fault-finding each time gains roughly five hours a month — one whole billable day every two months. The cost is ten minutes of note-taking the first time.
Where the record lives
On paper it gets lost and isn’t with you when you need it. In a file on the office computer it can’t be updated on site. The record only makes sense if it opens on your phone in front of the board and gets updated there — which is why in ElectroPro the installation record is the screen every job starts from.
Conclusion
A board record is the technical equivalent of a patient file: it holds everything you can’t see when you take the cover off. Ten minutes the first time, half an hour saved on every visit after — and an advantage no competitor without records can copy.