Electricity Question

[Homeworker]

im closing an office and moving it home ! UK 240volts

The room i am moving into has two single sockets

but i need to plug in

6 printers 4 computers & lcd screens 2 laptops 2 mobilephones heater tv ++?

Thats goona be seriously too many extensions yes ? also the wiring aint new ,possibly 30+ years old

i will take any advice from any electrician i bring out but i would like to be forwarned with any info

It would be crazy also to install any new sockets into wall as i might wellwant to sell up in future ........ so i would imagine ineed a new "spur" coming direct from mains fusebox with its own fuse .. correct me if i am wrong ? also how ami going to make all these sockets "temporary" without ruining the walls of the house

any thoughts appreciated

[Palindrome]

A few points:

1) Other than the heater (and the printers, if they are lasers) - the rest probably don't add up to much more than 1kW and can be powered off a single 10 or 12 way extension lead plugged into just one of the wall sockets you have.

2) If you can't read the labels and add up the power that each one says it uses, buy a (cheap) mains power meter (eg maplins) and plug in the extension lead via that. Just keep the total power well within the rating of the extension lead, as you plug in extra things. Again, beware of lasers as they take a lot more power when printing than they do when sat waiting, once "warmed up".

3) But none of this really matters if the house wiring is unsafe. IMBW but I don't think any electrician would take on a job of simply installing one, safe, new circuit where the rest of the system obviously was unsafe. At the very least he would want to leave all the unsafe circuitry disconnected..

4) The heater is the problem - if it is 1kW or more, I wouldn't plug it into the same extension as the others but plug it into its own wall socket, via its own (suitably rated) extension lead, if necessary.

5) Should a rewire be necessary, a good electrician will generally find ways of producing a neat job. They often manage to find voids and spaces that the house owner never knew existed..

[Andy Champ]

I'm mostly with Palindrome, except for one point. If you stuff that lot in a normal house room, it isn't a heater you'll need, it's a fan.

Andy

[cj]

Hi I think your estimates may be a little conservative, my Epsom inkjet is rated at .3A (80W),also most modern PC's have at least a 350w PSU and some dual core's run a 500w,LCD monitors vary from 45-95w on average and don't forget the extra's we all have like Routers or speakers even out of date scanners. Also the office normally has other electrical devices ranging from the humble radio to a fancy pencil sharpener.

As the wiring is suspect a dedicated supply is best (it is going to be an office after all) this will afford security of supply and facility for spike suppression. This could be done using 'DADO' trunking causing little damage to the room and also being 3 compartment carry the network cabling and BT lines as it does in industry. Trouble is it can be expensive but how much to rewire the room.

As a pointer my office has 3 pc's 1 acting as server ,2 printers ,scanner Hub and router,3 powered speaker units ,desk lamp and land line phone. When all in normal use power can peak at around 2.2kw . Still under the load for a single spur I know but it soon goes up if the fan is turned on or the laptops are plugged in to charge.

HTH CJ

[tinnews]

... but "rated at 0.3A" doesn't mean that it actually consumes 0.3A, it just means that it needs a circuit rated at a minimum of 0.3A and that it may consume up to that amount at times.

Similarly for the PC, it *might* consume 350W if all the disk slots are full, it has a top end graphics card, two CD/DVD drives, etc. Even then it would only consume 350W if all those things happened to be used at the same time and the processor was working hard too.

[Homeworker]

Folks

Thnks for the sensible replies , you seem like a good bunch here notlike the trolling sods over at uk.telecom.voip .

I ppeciate the advise an i think due to the wiring being old and my posible PEAK usag being highiwill fdefinte have a fused spur installed for safety , an maybe run quality extensions off the spur termination .

thnaks again for your useful thoughts