Garage Supply - Spured off house sockets?

[Paul K]

We have just moved onto a brand new house built by a large building company, I installed some security lighting around the garage at the weekend, went to turn off the Garage supply to make the final connections, checked the Consumer unit, no mcb for the garage, checked the room where the supply enters the house, no switch there either. Found I had to turn off the ground floor sockets to isolate the supply. Now I have been out of sparkying for about 6 years, so am a little rusty on regs now (trained on 15th ed).

As far as I can make out the supply is spured off a socket in the Utility room (socket placed about 6 inches left of the sink), this goes to an outside platic box, converts to swa, at the garage, swa - plastic box - back to t+e to fused spur for the light and then double socket.

Am I right in thinking the following is wrong

1. Socket too close to sink for one, there is a better position available
2. Spuring off the socket with no local isolation for the garage supply?
3. Isn't there something about equipitential zones when the remote building is not connected to the house.

I was thinking if there is a problem in the garage or with swa cable, the RCD would trip taking out the whole of the house sockets, no doubt the little platic boxes will be full with water in no time. The missus is bound to be on her own when this happens....

In time I'll proably rip the whole lot out and take a supply direct from the consumer unit on its own rcd. Oh by the way the consumer unit is only 2m from the socket the supply is spured from And to think some of the houses that do not have garage supplies as standard, they charge £375 for this :)

[Andy Hall]

There isn't a specific requirement on that. Perhaps a pragmatic solution would be to replace the offending one with an RCD type?

That's laziness and cheapness. It should at least be a separate circuit.

Yes and no. Depending on the type of supply provision and proximity to the house, it can be reasonable to export the house earth.

Like I said - laziness.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[SantaUK]

Funny you should bring this up. I have been in my house for two years and from the start I was aware that my garage, a brick built one, attached to the front of the house, is fed from the upper ring. I wasn't too concerned until I went to add a double socket into a bed room, when I took off an existing socket and found three cables into it. Obviously two for the ring, and whats the other for????? Oh - its a spur to the garage! I assumed the garage would have been part of the ring itself, but no - its just a spur. I have fitted a heater and lights in the garage, so I think I'll put a fused spur in the bedroom to be on the safe side before bigger and better adjustments are made.

[al]

You think that's bad - we had an armoured cable running the length of the garden for an old shed and greenhouse that we demolished. Rotovated the lawn which nicked the cable in a couple of places. Watered the new lawn for about an hour or two with the hose and suddenly the downstairs sockets started blowing! You can guess the rest more or less ... this armoured cable came up into the kitchen and was just straight off the dishwasher switch (of all things!) as a spur. Couldn't believe my eyes! Spend a good hour or two working in torchlight unscrewing every damn socket around the kitchen before I found it and disconnected it.

Oh and for all those who think it's a good idea to test dangerous AC stuff with a little plastic "electrical" screwdriver - when I brought it down the garden to test the outdoor cable (we only moved in last year and were told it was dead btw) it caused the mushed cables at the end to arc and blew it clean out of my hand in a giant shower of sparks (and plunged the house into darkness again for about the 20th time!). Lucky to still have a hand (or life for that matter with the amount of surface water everywhere from continuously soaking the grass for hours) I picked up what was left of the screwdriver - a distorted plastic handle with no metal coming out of it anymore!

There might be a moral to the story and I'm sure it's something to do with calling a qualified electrician when your lawn starts lighting up the night sky ...!

a

[BillR]

Mine been just like that for 22 years. My garage is 4m from house. The spur feeding it comes off the back of a bedroom socket for some reason. then runs down the cavity, out the wall 25cm above the path, goes under concrete path in what looks like black hosepipe and reappears inside garage. All in 2.5mm cable! Seems to work ok, maybe some day I'll get around to replacing it... :-)