Electrics - is this right?

[Martin Pentreath]

This is a slightly third hand report, but I'm a bit worried about some electrical work which a friend of mine has had done. He's had a two bedroom flat in London rewired and been charged =A36,000 (cough, cough cough!). That's worrying enough in itself, although it's a bit late to do anything about that.

What is worrying me is that it seems that in the kitchen there is no separate cooker circuit. He's having a gas hob and an electric oven. I presume that the oven is a 13A one (I don't know), but even so I wouldn't be comfortable running that off the same ring as the rest of the kitchen. Is such topography within either the spirit or the letter of the current regs?

(Incidentally, I possibly went to the other extreme and put a cooker circuit in (mine is 16A) and then two separate rings for everything else (and there's no washing machine there).)

Cheers!

Martin

[Owain]

It's permissible if the oven is a 13A one, as many are. Rather a cheap way of doing it IMO but I suppose the assumption is the oven probably won't be used much.

Is the immersion heater also on the ring? Because that's not supposed to happen.

Owain

[martin_pentreath]

OK, thanks Owain. I will check about the immersion, but that has slightly put my mind at rest. Knowing the friend in question it is highly likely that the oven will only be used for heating up pizzas once a month. But for six grand you would think the bloke could have put in another bit of cable. He's had the flat empty and chased out the screed, so another cable run would not really be much additional trouble. Just for forward planning I would want a heavy duty cooker circuit there to cope with possible changes of cooker in future without the need for another rewire..

Incidentally the =A36k did not extent to redoing the screed. He had another bloke in to quote for that and was given a price of =A31,000 for filling in about 25 linear metres of conduit chasing in the floor! A day's unskilled work I reckon. I've put him onto someone else who will think it's a good job for =A3200. It's all enough to make you want to do- it-yourself.

Cheers!

Martin

[meow2222]

Some full size ovens dont even eat 13A, its ok. =A3200, sheesh.

NT

[Invisible Man]

Our double oven takes about 18A as I recall so it is on a separate circuit.

[John Rumm]

Many ovens are only about 2kW and designed to plug in. Some double ovens have a higher peak load though.

In all likelihood it's fine.

Remember you can also apply diversity to domestic cooking appliances. Which works out as 10A + 30% of the remaining load (plus another 5A if there is a socket on the cooker point).

So even a cooker with a 30A maximum load, can be provisioned with a circuit designed for a load of 10 + (30 - 10) * 0.3 = 16A

[gazz]

well there you go, if it was a single oven it'd pull 9 amps,

[.]

£6k ...FFS .The sprka must have thought it was Christmas .Your friend got more money than sense ??

[martin_pentreath]

I think a message has gone out on the north London tradesmen grapevine that he's the local cash machine. I would have thought =A36k is about a month's work! He's certainly got more money than time, he just seems to take the first quote they give him and never has time to check up on what they're doing.

Thanks to all for the further advice - I seem to err too much on the side of caution with these things, so it looks like it's all fine. I'd still have specified a separate circuit for later expansion, but at least his kitchen won't be bursting into flames in the foreseeable future.

[robert]

So with a simple single oven (maximum draw 13A) and a gas hob I take it that a dedicated 32A circuit would not be essential? The reason I ask is that I am about to get some quotes for rewiring our kitchen.

[Owain]

Yes, but the additional cost of putting in a dedicated cooker circuit (or at least the cable) would be fairly minimal.

Owain

[Andrew Gabriel]

It may still be worth doing. When I rewired my kitchen 7 years ago, I put in a cooker circuit and switch, even though it currently has a gas cooker. The 30A flex outlet actually has an unswitched 13A socket outlet fitted at the moment, which powers the cooker's spark ignition and 15W oven lamp! It would however be trivial to connect an electric cooker at some point in the future.

You might also consider provisioning an electric shower circuit, even if you don't currently have/need one.