safe isolation on a boiler. In today’s video I’m going to show you what I do. This is sort of gas training, but what I would say is make sure you go on your own safety course, and disclaimer for me just so you can’t come back and sue me for it. But I’m going to do safe isolation on a boiler. Yeah, let’s have a look.
Electrical safe isolation. So if we’re going to work on any gas appliance, any boiler, we need to make sure that we’re safe. And it’s very, very important. I did a job a few days ago and I showed the video, which I’ll add below here, but you could have got an electrical shock on that video so it’s very, very important that we do safe isolation if we’re going to work on a boiler.
First of all what we need to do, we need to locate the fuse spur. We’ve located what we believe could be the fuse spur. What we’re going to do now, we’ll turn this off and we’ll see if the boiler display goes off.
Now we need to ask ourselves is it safe to touch? And the answer to that question is no. What we’ve got, we’ve got flue pen, we test the case. But we need to test the pen’s working first. What we’ll do now, we’ll test it with a known source. And then after we’ve tested it then we’ll test the case and then we’ll test it again, so it’s prove, use, prove. And that’s PUP. If you remember PUP, so we’re proving, prove that it works, use it, and then prove it again.
Prove, use, prove. It’s important that we test the equipment that we’re using first to make sure that it’s working. So prove, use, prove. Prove, and then I’m going to test the case. And then I’m going to test anything else that’s about that’s metallic as well, all that we’re going to touch that’s metal just to make sure that we’re safe. Then prove. And then we’re going to remove the fuse and inspect the fuse. And then after that we’ll also take the case off.
Now I’m going to remove the fuse and check the fuse. And that’s a three amp fuse in this one. I’ve got the fuse in my pocket, going to put the fuse in my pocket, safely in my pocket. Going to remove the front cover, pull the front flap down and we’re going to uncover the electrics and we can test the electrics on that then.
I’m going to use a Socket and See to prove safe isolation. First of all we need to prove, make sure the tester is working. And then we’re going to use. And then we’ll come back and then we’ll prove again. I’m now doing a dead test to make sure that the boiler, there’s no power to this boiler. So I’m going to put this probe here onto the neutral and then I’m going to put the other probe across all the other terminals in the boiler. And as I’m doing that, what I’m doing is I’m making sure that none of this lights up here. And then I’m going to move this onto the earth. And again, I’m going to go across all the connections and we’re going to make sure that none of these light come on. And then we need to go back and prove again it’s still working. So as I say now, we’ve proved again. So we’ve proved, we’ve used and we’ve proved. Very important.
What we’re trying to establish with what we’re doing is that the boiler is safe to work on and there’s no power going to the boiler. As we say, safe isolation. What we’ve done with the multi metre, we’ve connected the blue, we’ve connected that onto the neutral into the boiler, and then we’ve used the brown one and we’ve gone across all the connections on the boiler. The permanent live, so the live from the fuse to the. And then also, any switched lives or any other terminals in there as well. And then what we’ve done, we’ve put the blue onto the earth and then we’ve tested them all again. Made sure we’ve checked the live, the switched live and any other wires in there just to make sure that nobody’s wired in another external source.
Sometimes, and I’ve had this myself in the past where somebody’s wired an external control. And that might have its own power supply. And that could come in on the switched live. So you could do your tests here and if you didn’t check that wire, then it could still have power coming in. And obviously that would be unsafe. So you need to make sure that boiler is safe to work on and you’ve done all your tests.
I said multi metre then, it’s actually an earth loop impedance tester. So it’s not a multi metre.
Now we need to make sure that the fuse spur couldn’t be turned back on. It’s okay where we are here now because the spur’s at the side of us and we’re here so nobody can disturb it. But if that fuse spur were in a cupboard at the side or it were downstairs or somewhere else, then we’d have to make sure that somebody else couldn’t come in and put a fuse in and then turn the power back on,
