Electrical safety concern

[Phil]

Hi,

A friend works for a a local doctor's surgery and she asked me to pop in and have a look at their leaking sink in the ladies loo.

It is a small hand basin fitted into a corner with an electric handwash heater above. The sink is so tight into the corner that the pipework to the heater has to come up the wall and across the top of the sink.

My concern is the electric feed to the handwash heater as it has a flexible 3 core cable which comes from a flex outlet plate about a foot below the sink on the wall. When I got there, water was able to run down the cable and as there is no "rain loop", water is able to run into the flex outlet although it doesn't appear to have done so yet.

I applied some sealant to the sink to stop water running down the flex but I am concerned about having a flex outlet on the wall below a sink. Am I right to be concerned or is this acceptable?

BTW: the installation of the handwash heater is fairly recent i.e. within the last 18 months.

[Owain]

A flex outlet below a sink is not unacceptable per se, but having the heater flex so arranged that water can run into it is.

I wonder if there used to be an under-sink heater which has been replaced by an over-sink one? which would explain the position of the FCU.

It sounds as though replacing the flex with a slightly longer one would remedy the problem. You might also use a short length of plastic mini-trunking to route the flex appropriately.

Electricity at Work Regulations will apply.

Owain

[manatbandq]

I noticed that the hand driers at work have their mains isolation switches on the wall next to them, where they could be operated by someone with wet hands. Is this allowed? Would hand driers normally be transformer isolated upstream of the switch?

MBQ

[Owain]

Yes and no, unless located in a bathroom. Better practice would be to mount the switches out of immediate reach.

Owain

[Phil]

Thanks for the peace of mind.