WILCO RCD Safety alert
Is your RCD safe?
Wilco RCDs are very common in homes across Australia especially houses that were built in the 90s to early 2000s. At Metro Electrical 24 Hour Electricians we will always test an RCD when we are working on a job, while other brands of RCD’s do fail wilco RCD’s have about a 90% failure rate. Nearly every time we come across one it will be faulty, the two most common ways a wilco RCD will fail is once tripped it wont reset no matter what you do. This can be very frustrating for people that have not had much experience with Wilco RCD’s.
The more dangerous way in which wilco RCD’s fail is they wont trip at all even if there is a fault is can be life threatening if a fault occurs in which the RCD should have tripped to save a life.
You can test it your self by pressing the test button located on the RCD once pressed it should trip if it trips fast and can easily switched back on it is in working order. If you press the test button and nothing happens it is faulty or if it trips slowly it will be faulty. Sometimes after pressing the test button the switch will become lose and spongy if this occurs it is faulty. If you press the test button and it trip fine but wont reset it could be a fault on the circuit but the RCD was just stuck in the on possession and could not trip but most likely it is just faulty and needs to be replaced.
These same issue can happen to other RCD’s but if you have a Wilco RCD we highly recommend getting it checked out, we can do other test to make sure it is it 100% working order or replace it if its not working correctly. The Australian Government recommends doing a leat the manual test by pressing the test button on the RCD’s every month.
