Electrical Supply to Loft Conversion

[Hamie!]

We're having a loft conversion done and the electrician that tiurned up today, said that he'd just run the sockets & lighting off the existing

1st floor stuff... ANd not run a new line from the consumer unit on separate circuts.

Is that OK? Isn't there a 50m^2 floor area limit on sockets with a single circut breaker (Ring main, not star wired). The loft plus 1st floor would be close to 100m^2 together...

TIA

Hamish.

[John Rumm]

The limit for a ring is 100m^2... Having said that I thing I would prefer to run a new circuit for both. Do you have enough spare ways on your CU? It may be there were insufficient and he was avoiding the cost of a new CU.

[Christian McArdle]

The limit is 100m2. I'd not be worried myself, unless there are large fixed appliances. You'll probably never use even a fraction of a ring's capacity on a 1st floor/loft conversion shared circuit. In a modern centrally heated house, it's only really the kitchen and electric showers that use large amounts of electricity.

The worst case is that your central heating fails and you try to run more than 4 2kW fan heaters. Even then, it would probably be OK if they had thermostats.

Christian.

[Lurch]

Possibly not the way I'd do it but fine all the same.

For a 32A ring main the maximum floor area is 100m2 ..

SJW A.C.S. Ltd.

[Owain]

"Lurch" wrote | "Hamie!" wrote: | >We're having a loft conversion done and the electrician that tiurned | >up today, said that he'd just run the sockets & lighting off the | >existing 1st floor stuff... ANd not run a new line from the | >consumer unit on separate circuts. | For a 32A ring main the maximum floor area is 100m2

I'd be more concerned about the lighting circuit as that may already be approaching maximum (theoretical, each point 100W) capacity especially if there are lots of bedhead lights and bathroom fans wired in.

Owain

[Lurch]

You could get around that by taking the lighting for the loft off of the ring. ..

SJW A.C.S. Ltd.