Kitchen electrics

[Bill]

OK, please avoid mentioning part P in any replies! Not sure if it would apply any way as these are a small industrial premise.

A friend of a friend has a large house that is converted into offices. The kitchen area is about to be renovated, plaster removed and replaced as it is long past its use by date and due to damp is coming away from the brick work. The damp is being treated at the same time.

Any way at the moment there is one cooker point above the work surface with a single switched 13A socket. No other sockets in the room. For some time a 4 way multiblock has fed the kettle, microwave and fridge! So the obvious answer would be to do away with the cooker point, it is very unlikely a cooker will ever be installed, and fit some twin 13A sockets. The only problem I can see is that it would not be possible to wire them as a ring as there is only one cable coming from the CU which is some distance away, sorry I don't know the size of this cable, probably 6 or 10mm but I've not checked it.

Not actually my problem as I'm only doing his plumbing but I would be interested in his options. Any ideas folks?

[John Rumm]

Simplest way forward would be to re-purpose the cooker circuit as a socket one.

No need for a ring configuration, a radial would be fine. The only difficulty you may have if the existing cable is very heavy is terminating it at the first socket position. Subsequent sockets can be run is a more appropriate sized cable so long as the protective device at the CU is selected so as to protect this size cable and not the existing one. The labelling at the CU would need to change as well.

[David Hansen]

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:39:19 GMT someone who may be Bill wrote this:-

I would leave the cooker circuit as it is, though perhaps changing the switch unit to one without a socket. I would also install a new final circuit for sockets. This would probably be a ring, but might be a radial in some circumstances.