Water heater safety

[davesparks]

Serious question. Can you omit overload protection on fixed loads in this way and be compliant with regs? I know there is sometimes provision for it, but I tend to have a problem with it when it's wholly unnecessary.

In effect the only protective device other than the RCCB could be the suppliers cut out fuse. That just seems wrong to me. What about a line-neutral fault. This shouldn't trip the RCCB so is potentially dangerous. C2 if I find this imo.

Slightly different is the situation I found today doing an EICR. 2x single sockets fed from the same 32A MCB - both radials. 2.5 T&E. Technically not dangerous as it's impossible to overload the cables. C3 for me though as it could be improved and is unnecessary in my opinion.

Yes you can omit overload protection, but you cannot omit fault protection.
You still need to have a correctly rated OCPD to give fault protection, it just doesn't necessarily have to provide overload protection so the ccc of the cable may be smaller than the OCPD rating.

 

[Deleted member 9648]

Slightly different is the situation I found today doing an EICR. 2x single sockets fed from the same 32A MCB - both radials. 2.5 T&E. Technically not dangerous as it's impossible to overload the cables. C3 for me though as it could be improved and is unnecessary in my opinion.

I cant see how a code is appropriate there because it is no different to a standard spur from a 32a RFC.