Correct way to wire in an electric oven

[TonyJeffs]

So far I have a 6 mm cable from the fuse box to the kitchen, terminating in a cooker 'socket' (correct term? It has a neon light, dpdt switch and the incoming and output terminals are inside it. It is not fused and there is no hole to run the cooker cable out)

I imagine I need to continue the supply to another 15a fused outlet with a hole for the cooker flex with a gripper fitted in a convenient location at the back of the cooker? Or what should I do?

Thanks

Tony

[BigWallop]

I'd look lower down the wall for a connection unit. It looks like a blank plate on the front of a back box.

[Me]

On the subject of which.... I've a cooker rated 2.8kW. I can't see any good reason not to extend the radial cct from the cooker switch to a 13A socket and put a 13A plug on a suitable flex to the cooker (all run in 6mm^2 and protected at the CU witha 32A mCB). Makes maintenance easy since the cooker just unplugs and introduces discrimination since I can put a 10A fuse in the plug. Any disadvantages or reasons *not* to do this?

[Frisket]

good reason not to

plug on a suitable

mCB). Makes maintenance

can put a 10A fuse in

If by cooker you mean oven then what you suggest is pretty much standard practise - it's the 6.5+kw hobs that need hard wiring. Richard.

[TonyJeffs]

Me, A very slight disadvantage is perhaps that someone could plug a low wattage device (eg a 40 watt lamp) into your 32amp supply socket. But they'd have to crawl behind the kitchen units to do it.

I think your way is best. I'll see if there's a socket with the word "cooker" on it in red, and use that to complete my installation, which would somewhat overcome the above.

Thanks

Tony

[stefek.zaba]

And this is different from plugging that 40W lamp into a ring main whose wiring is protected by a 32A breaker how, exactly? Either is fine.

Short-circuit and overload protection for the lamp cable is provided by the fuse in the plugtop in the first instance. Short-circuit protection is further provided by the MCB for the whole circuit. Plug-top fuses in UK plugs are one of the things which makes ringmains feeding appliances wired in wimpy 0.75mmsq cabling just fine - and that's one of the reasons that a Euro Standard Plug is massively unlikely to ever happen. (Continental wiring practice is much more in the direction of radials to individual rooms or a couple of adjacent rooms, fused/breakered at 15A or 20A, and Schucko-style unfused plugs-&-socketses. Possibly-overload-generating appliances have thicker (1.5mmsq) cable than some UK manufacturers would use with integral moulded plug. That, together with the "semi-polarised" nature of Schucko plugs (you can certainly plug 2-pin plugs either way round, and many of the 3-contact variants (2 pins for live & neutral, 'scraping' earth contacts at top and bottom) can also be plugged in either way up) make any single Euro-wide plug-n-socket damned unlikely. Interoperability in practice is largely achieved through using separate mains cords with a country-specific plug at one end and a Standard cable-end-socket (IEC320-style for 3-pin, figure-of-8-style for 2-pin) at the other, with a matching chassis plug on the world-wide-identical main unit.

Stefek