Electricity for bathroom

[Gary]

I am wondering what is the normal way of getting electricity into a bathroom.

I am wanting to power a shower pump and obviously there is no socket in the bathroom.

I could connect into the light circuit from the kitchen below or I could drill into the kids bedroom and run a lead to a socket which is quite close. Would it be OK to just put a plug on the pump and plug it in or is it needed to fit isolators etc. This may sound like a dumb question but I would like to do the job safely and legally.

TIA

Gary

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[Tabby]

[Andy Burns]

Are you sure the pump wants to be in the bathroom? do you have a hot water tank? If so, where is it?

Lighting circuits are for lights (or on occasion very low powered devices such as TV amplifiers in a loft) not for powering things like sower pumps.

Legally speaking fixed wiring in a bathroom is covered by Part P.

I suspect you need to give more info and ask more questions in order to do the job safely.

[Baz]

Sorry to be so blunt. But if you are asking questions like this, you shouldn't be playing with electrics.

Baz

[A.Lee]

I'd suggest a dedicated circuit to it from your CU. You will most probably need RCD protection. The pump can either be fitted underneath the bath (can get a little tight there, but is possible), or underneath your hot water cylinder. Putting it under the hot water cylinder will make things simpler, and you may even be able to take a spur off an existing circuit, so long as the load isnt too much. A dedicated circuit makes maintenance easier in the future, as well as minimising inconvenience if a fault develops with the pump. No, you dont want to plug it into an existing socket. Alan.

[John Rumm]

Cables usually ;-)

What sort of shower pump? The sort built into a waterproof enclosure that is designed to be installed in the shower cubical itself, or the sort designed to go in the pipework before it gets to the shower?

The former are frequently 12V and have a PSU that needs to be installed outside of the bathroom. The latter are usually installed near the hot water cylinder anyway, and would typically be powered from a fused connection unit fed by a socket circuit.

Probably not a good solution.

bit more info required.

[Djornsk]

That calls to mind an image from childhood of someone using an electric iron plugged into a light socket via an adapter to allow the bulb to be left in place. The bayonet light sockets are still with us but I've not seen one of those adapters for a long time. BTW I don't think this would work very well for a power shower.

j

[Rick Hughes]

Lighting circuits are for powering lights & and only a low power shaver socket ... nothing else in bathroom. You would probably need to be looking at a suitably protected fused spur

[Andy Dingley]

My parents still used one for their christmas lights until a couple of years ago. A foot or so of single-sheath transparent twisted cable went from a 13A plug (guess the fuse rating) to a BC socket, then a BC to twin BC adapter with a push-bar switch to control one socket outlet. Then a BC plug of ancient vintage. Every time they bought new christmas tree lights, Dad would cut off the supplied plug and replace it with the ancient BC plug.

I can only assume that it was some sort of evolutionary appendicitis. In the 1950s the newly-weds had acquired an adapter to work in a house that only had lighting sockets, and the rest had followed on step-by- step from there.

[funkyoldcortina]

Similarly, until very recently my parents used to run their xmas lights from a 2-pin plug. God knows how long they'd had it but whenever they got new lights the 2-pin plug would be wired onto the new lights. The 2-pin plug would then be plugged into 13A socket via a shaver adapter (an old one with no fuse and no shutters!)

Now correct me if I'm wrong but I thought even the round 3-pin low-current lighting sockets were shuttered? So how could a 2-pin ever be used in them? Where would it have come from?

I cut it off and wired the lights into a 13A plug with a 3A fuse.

[Mike Clarke]

The 2 pin plug would have been from the days when there were 2 pin sockets and they were never shuttered.