Standards & safety
Standards & safety
The New Zealand electrical rulebook in plain English — what's required, what isn't, and where Basis sits against it.
Type A vs Type B RCD — what your EV charger actually needs.
An RCD is meant to cut power the instant current leaks to earth. Not all RCDs detect all leakage. Here is the difference between Type A and Type B, and why EV charging changes the answer.
1 in 14 shock protectors silently fail. Most homeowners have no idea.
Residual current devices are the protective device that disconnects power before a shock kills. Field studies find that roughly 1 in 14 stop working without anyone noticing. The standard recommends a 6-month test. Almost no homeowner does it.
40% of switchboards leave you exposed to electric shock.
The most rigorous published audit of safety-switch (RCD) coverage in the AS/NZS 3000 region found that around 40% of homes have no RCD protection at all. New Zealand shares the same wiring standard and housing-stock age profile. Here is the report, the numbers, and what Basis does about it.
Electrical fires: the #1 identified cause of US home fire property loss.
Cooking starts more home fires than any other cause. Electrical malfunction destroys more home value than any other identified cause. The same wiring physics applies in New Zealand. Here is the US Fire Administration data, the per-fire severity gap, and what Basis does about it.
Arc faults, and the 65% of home electrical fires that start with one.
About two thirds of home electrical fires start with an arc. A default switchboard cannot detect them. Here is what an arc fault is, why legacy protection misses it, and what Basis does about it.
AS/NZS 3000 in plain English.
The Wiring Rules every New Zealand electrician works to. Hundreds of pages. Most homeowners never read a line of them. Here is what they require of your switchboard, and where the standard is silent on risks that matter.
Electrical Safety Regulations 2010 — homeowner edition.
The New Zealand rules that say who can do electrical work, how often it must be inspected, and what a landlord owes a tenant. The plain-English version.
AFDD — the protection standard New Zealand hasn't mandated yet.
Germany, the UK, and parts of the US require arc-fault detection on new switchboards. New Zealand doesn't. Basis has shipped AFDD to every home anyway.