Arc Flash Switching Suit Kits

What is in a kit

A switching suit kit is a complete set rather than a garment. Depending on the kit, you will get an arc flash hood with a rated visor, a jacket, dungarees or bib-and-brace trousers, a pair of arc-rated gloves, and a holdall to keep it all together and transport it to site as one piece.

Buying it as a kit matters more than it sounds. The arc rating applies to the system as a whole, so a correctly rated jacket paired with an unrated hood leaves you unprotected in the part of your body you can least afford to expose. The kits are assembled so the whole set carries the stated rating.

Choosing by cal/cm2, not by voltage

This is the question we are asked most, usually as "which suit do I need for 11kV?", and the honest answer is that the voltage on its own does not tell you.

What determines the suit is the incident energy at the point you are working, and that depends on the available fault current, how quickly the protection clears the fault, and how far your body is from the arc. Two 11kV panels in the same building can call for very different levels of protection. Pick the suit from the incident energy figure your arc flash risk assessment gives you, then choose a rating that meets or exceeds it.

If you do not have that figure, that is the thing to sort out first. Reece Safety carry out arc flash surveys to establish incident energy across a site, and runs training and consultancy for teams working on or near live equipment. Buying a suit without the survey is guessing with the expensive option.

What we stock

Alongside the full kits we also stock a 12 cal/cm2 switching jacket and a 47 cal/cm2 switching coat for tasks where a full suit is more than the job needs.

The lightest suit is not the lowest rated one

Worth knowing before you assume more protection means more weight. The BSD Power 41 cal/cm2 suit is made from a 410 g/m2 ultra-light fabric, while the 28 cal/cm2 double-layer kit weighs 600 g/m2 across its two layers. The higher-rated suit is the lighter one to wear.

It is also made from inherently flame-resistant fabric and tested for breathability to EN 31092, which is the difference between a suit people wear properly and a suit people take off early. If your team spends extended periods in a switching suit, start there rather than at the entry point.

At the top of the range

The Charnaud Survive-ARC 100 cal/cm2 switching suit is the highest rated suit we hold. It comes with a hood, a long jacket, and bib-and-brace trousers, built from a layered 754 g/m2 para-aramid fabric, and it is tested to IEC 61482-1-1 at 100 cal/cm2. It is specified where a survey has returned an incident energy that nothing else on this page will cover.

Prices, sizes and getting one quickly

Every suit on this page shows its price. We don't hide them behind an enquiry form, because if you are specifying protection, you need to know what it costs before you get a quote.

Kits come in sizes S to 3XL, and we hold the popular sizes in stock across the range, which means we can usually ship the same day the order comes in. That is unusual for this type of protective clothing, and it is the difference between a job going ahead and a job waiting. If you need a size or a rating that is not showing, or you want a suit checked against the figures from your risk assessment before you commit, talk to us first.

The rest of the arc flash range, including the lower-rated day-to-day clothing, sits in the arc flash clothing section.