Fuse boxes and consumer units serve the same purpose within your Cheshire home. They are there to safely distribute power throughout your property via multiple circuits, as well to turn off instantaneously at the first sight of an electrical overload on any of the circuits – this is known as tripping.

When this happens with a consumer unit, the power is switched off via a circuit breaker that is linked to the circuit where the overload occurred. As a result, the switch on the consumer unit will automatically turn itself to the off position, thus making the circuit with the fault on it easy to identify. After the circuit has been fixed, the switch can be flicked back up to the on position to restore the power supply. Where this does not work, there may be the need for a qualified electrician to perform a full consumer unit upgrade or replacement.

Instead of circuit breakers, a traditional fuse box uses fuses in order to switch off the electricity supply in the event of an electrical overload. The process of the fuse melting causes the circuit to trip, thus switching off the power. Identifying which circuit the fault happened on is not easy with a fuse box given the fact that there is no visual indicator like there is with a consumer unit. There is also the need to replace the fuse that has melted.