PE tester, Kelly Vincent, gives us her verdict on the Easy9+ Consumer Unit from Schneider Electric.
The first thing you’ll notice about this consumer unit is that, aesthetically, it certainly is stylish. It has curved edges, a sleek clean design and plenty of space inside the lid for labels, charts and diagrams,leaving the front panel clear of markings. With the enclosure door shut you wouldn’t even know it was a consumer unit. Perfect for those boards that are not hidden away under the stairs.
During installation, I was impressed with the amount of space behind, above and below the DIN rail. It meant cables were easy to run where needed and there was no risk of sharp bends or cables being squashed together. I hadn’t realised at the time of installation but this board can be flush mounted reducing the overall size taken up within the room. I would have loved to have tried this!The flexibility of being able to flush mount or surface mount is a great selling point and perfect for new installations.
There are more than enough knockouts for a wide variety of cable entry positions, with rear knockouts both at the top and bottom which I found brilliant, it made things so much easier for me to keep the existing cables where they were and bring them into the new board neatly, it saved me so much time on the job.
Pros
● Customisable cover
● Reversible enclosure lid
● Massive amount of space inside for cable positioning
● Flexibility with mounting options (flush or surface)
● Ease installation
Cons
● Not suitable for tight or limited spaces
● Unit on the larger side
● Labels and stickers very difficult to peel
The terminal bars are all easy to access and numbered clearly and methodically to ensure correct wiring of cables into their terminals, which we all know saves an immense amount of time for future inspection, testing and fault finding. The instruction manual was thorough and detailed, with good diagrams to help with ease of installation, particularly with fixings giving detailed measurements for position of fixing screws so I didn’t have to hold the weight of the board and balance my spirit level whilst trying to mark fixings! I didn’t enjoy peeling off the labels and circuit stickers from the sheet, they were fiddly and seemed like a waste of my time, but that’s a minor complaint.
Easy on the eye
To set it aside from any other consumer unit on the market, Schneider give homeowners the option of customising the front face. It offers interchangeable magnetic front covers that can easily be swapped as often as necessary to match the interior – this definitely offers the wow factor for clients. My customer was extremely excited to find out they could go online with the product number supplied and order a front cover displaying her favourite family portrait!
