Big Clive Tears Down an "Un-Trippable" Circuit Breaker, Finds a Dangerous Fake

YouTuber "Big Clive" has published a tear-down of an interesting, and frankly worrying, device: A circuit breaker that looks and feels perfectly normal from the outside, but which is designed to never trip — even in the event of a fault.

Circuit breakers are a mainstay of electrical installations, and they have one simple job: To break the circuit in case of fault. Old-fashioned fuse boxes, with lengths of thin wire which literally melts away in an over-current scenario, have largely been replaced with resettable breakers: Correct the fault, flip the switch, and your circuit is back online.

The device Big Clive has showcased, though, is different. From the outside, it looks perfectly normal — there's even a breaker bar which can be flipped up and down with a satisfying clunk. The trouble is: This circuit breaker doesn't break circuits.

"This is uninspiring. It's a circuit breaker that looks and feels just like the real thing, but has no fault detecting ability at all," Big Clive explains. "Why would somebody even make something like this?"

"It's made worse by the fact that there is no standard test to see if a circuit breaker is tripping at its rated current. There are specialist testers that use a low voltage transformer to test breakers, but they usually have to be removed from equipment for the test. A type C 32A breaker would also need to be tested at a minimum of 160A."

While the lack of safety functionality is immediately obvious upon disassembly, it's not so clear from the outside. "These fake breakers weigh 53g (2oz) per module," Big Clive notes. "Typical UK breakers weigh 100g (4oz) per module. But weight is not a guarantee of functionality."

The full video is now available on Big Clive's YouTube channel.