Isolation switch for council supply

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deweyzeph

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Does anyone know how to get the COCT municipality to install an isolation switch so you can switch off the council supply to your property if you need to work on the DB board? For some reason my house has no isolation switch which means it is impossible to switch off the power coming from supply kiosk in the road. I'm in the process of converting my old Samite DB board to a more modern DIN rail board, but obviously can't do that without being able to switch off the supply. I suspect that when the house was converted to prepaid they removed the old meter along with the isolation switch in the cabinet on the outside wall of my house and just reconnected everything without bothering to install another isolation switch. Problem is that the prepaid meter doesn't have an isolation switch either. So I've effectively got the following path for my electricity:

Street Kiosk -> Prepaid Meter next to DB board (no isolation switch) -> DB Board
 
Just hold back on your municipal account for a couple of weeks. When they disconnect you get all the db work done and then pay your account to be reconnected.
 
If you mean before the meter... no. Too easy to bypass the meter then.

If you mean between the meter and your DB, then your incomer isolater should do the job. Only job you couldn't do is move that incomer... which may need consents etc... I.e. depends where it starts being your wire not theirs... bet each municipality/Eskom has its own rules and bye-laws.
 
richjdavies said:
If you mean before the meter... no. Too easy to bypass the meter then.

If you mean between the meter and your DB, then your incomer isolater should do the job. Only job you couldn't do is move that incomer... which may need consents etc... I.e. depends where it starts being your wire not theirs... bet each municipality/Eskom has its own rules and bye-laws.
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We have a setoff fuses in the outside metering box.
 
richjdavies said:
If you mean before the meter... no. Too easy to bypass the meter then.

If you mean between the meter and your DB, then your incomer isolater should do the job. Only job you couldn't do is move that incomer... which may need consents etc... I.e. depends where it starts being your wire not theirs... bet each municipality/Eskom has its own rules and bye-laws.
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I've never heard of needing permission or consent to change your db board. In any case it's pretty normal in cape town to have an isolation switch in your outside metering box where the earth and neutral split, it's just that mine is missing.
 
deweyzeph said:
I've never heard of needing permission or consent to change your db board. In any case it's pretty normal in cape town to have an isolation switch in your outside metering box where the earth and neutral split, it's just that mine is missing.
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When I converted to prepaid with COCT I had the same setup outside, metal box with circuit breaker before meter and from there to the DB. After conversion the analogue meter was replaced with the "main" prepaid meter and from there to a control unit where you enter the vouchers, the outside box got a lock on that you can't open. So yes if I want to do something like replace the earth spike or even change the main circuit breaker I would need to phone as well.
 
krieg said:
When I converted to prepaid with COCT I had the same setup outside, metal box with circuit breaker before meter and from there to the DB. After conversion the analogue meter was replaced with the "main" prepaid meter and from there to a control unit where you enter the vouchers, the outside box got a lock on that you can't open. So yes if I want to do something like replace the earth spike or even change the main circuit breaker I would need to phone as well.
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I've got one of the older prepaid meters where the meter and the keypad are in the same box, and it's physically located right next to my DB board. The outside box (on my wall inside the boundaries of my property) where the old analogue meter used to be just contains the incoming live and neutral from the street kiosk, but I can see it obviously used to house the old analogue meter. From this box the live continues to the prepaid meter inside my house, and the neutral splits into neutral and earth and then also continues through to my prepaid meter and DB board. This is where there is supposed to be an isolation switch on the live wire so you can safely cutoff the supply to the house.

I guess what I could do is ask the COCT to upgrade my prepaid meter to one that has an isolation switch built into it. That would effectively do the job as well.
 
deweyzeph said:
I've got one of the older prepaid meters where the meter and the keypad are in the same box, and it's physically located right next to my DB board. The outside box (on my wall inside the boundaries of my property) where the old analogue meter used to be just contains the incoming live and neutral from the street kiosk, but I can see it obviously used to house the old analogue meter. From this box the live continues to the prepaid meter inside my house, and the neutral splits into neutral and earth and then also continues through to my prepaid meter and DB board. This is where there is supposed to be an isolation switch on the live wire so you can safely cutoff the supply to the house.

I guess what I could do is ask the COCT to upgrade my prepaid meter to one that has an isolation switch built into it. That would effectively do the job as well.
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There is a breaker to switch off power to your home

Like others have said it is in the street box that municipality has keys for

They don't like to put a means of switching off power before the meter ,this makes it easier to bypass the meter, though shedding kinda makes this practice futile

So you would have to contact them to switch off for work that requires your supply line to db to be dead

You could just let the meter run empty , change db recharge meter
 
leon.davibe said:
There is a breaker to switch off power to your home

Like others have said it is in the street box that municipality has keys for

They don't like to put a means of switching off power before the meter ,this makes it easier to bypass the meter, though shedding kinda makes this practice futile

So you would have to contact them to switch off for work that requires your supply line to db to be dead

You could just let the meter run empty , change db recharge meter
Click to expand...

Yes, I understand there's a breaker in the street kiosk, but it's utterly ridiculous that you have to call the council out everytime you want to switch off the supply to your house. In every other property I've lived in here in Cape Town there has been another breaker on the property between the street kiosk and the DB board that allows you to cutoff the supply to safely work on the DB board. For some reason my property just doesn't have one.
 
deweyzeph said:
Yes, I understand there's a breaker in the street kiosk, but it's utterly ridiculous that you have to call the council out everytime you want to switch off the supply to your house. In every other property I've lived in here in Cape Town there has been another breaker on the property between the street kiosk and the DB board that allows you to cutoff the supply to safely work on the DB board. For some reason my property just doesn't have one.
Click to expand...
Although you have two very easy, very feasible options already in this thread. 1) Do it during loadshedding and 2) let your prepaid credit run out, do the changes, and then reload.
 
deweyzeph said:
Yes, I understand there's a breaker in the street kiosk, but it's utterly ridiculous that you have to call the council out everytime you want to switch off the supply to your house. In every other property I've lived in here in Cape Town there has been another breaker on the property between the street kiosk and the DB board that allows you to cutoff the supply to safely work on the DB board. For some reason my property just doesn't have one.
Click to expand...
Old homes may be different

I have not lived in a single home that had , a breaker to cut the feed pre prepaid meter

They just don't do it that way anymore, it helps prevent tampering, or used to thanks to loadshedding not so effective anymore

Main breaker does isolate your house , except the feed line all is dead. Which is good enough for most scenarios

Just tripping the municipal box with a short on the feed line will have the line dead too

You still have to call them to come switch it on again

The empty meter is just the easiest option where you control when the power comes back on
 
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