Kitchen sockets

[Huge]

I'm doing a bit of a refurb in our (22 y/o) kitchen. I've sanded down all the (wooden) drawer and cupboard fronts and painted them, which I'm very pleased with, I finally found some dark brown 19mm edging tape, so I've fixed all the bits where it had fallen off, we're trying to choose some new worktops (why do we always want whatever's not fashionable?) and we've chosen some new tiles.

One of the things I'd like to do as part of the tiling job is install more mains sockets. We presently have a single socket and two doubles over the worktops and ATM there's a 6-way distribution strip plugged into the single and a 4 way into one of the doubles.

What's the best/legal/neatest way of providing built-in sockets in those sorts of numbers? I could install a row of double sockets & daisy chain them together, but surely there's a better way?

[Tim Watts]

First question: Can you incorporate your new sockets into the ring?

[Andrew Gabriel]

Many kitchens nowadays are built more for show, and aren't designed to be used as real kitchens for food preparation.

I redid my parent's kitchen wiring in 2000. I looked to see how many electrical items they had on the worktop, and allowed for all to be plugged in together and then 30% extra. It has lasted about 14 years before the first adaptor appeared, and that was when mum and dad ended up with their own different style coffee machines! The 30% extra sockets are almost all used up - the excess over the original 15 year old design has been caused by extra chargers for phones, kindles, VoIP wall wart, etc, and one or two extra kitchen appliances.

[newshound]

Doesn't that bring you up in front of the Part P Police?

Certainly, as you imply, the best thing to do is to "break into" the ring and add two or three doubles between each existing socket (watching out for spurs).

There are very convenient "trunking" systems that you could mount underneath the top cupboards, but they look a bit industrial.

[Huge]

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Assuming that a socket will have 2 cables if it's in the ring and only one if it isn't ...

- The single is in the ring

- The double isn't (I suspect it's spurred off the cooker point, judging from the direction the cable sets off. Haven't looked inside the cooker point yet - SWMBO was listening to The Archers & making disapproving noises).

[Tim Watts]

Not anymore AFAIK but I don;t care enough to care :)

Anyway, happy to answer the OP's actual question if he will be kind enough to answer the query :)

Indeed.

He could add a run of sockets to an FCU too as a radial branch - but only of the intended purpose is lots of small stuff like mixers and phone chargers.

[Tim Watts]

It's worth actually checking in case someone has done a spur off a spur.

Easily determined though - disconnect the socket in question, make the ends temporarily safe and power up and check all the other sockets are live (a spur off a spur will leave an orphan if you do this).

Turn the cooker circuit off and see if that socket goes dead...

So to answer the original question, unfortunately the only neat way I can think off is to set some more doubles up and break into the ring.

Unless you intend these to be for low current appliances like phones, in which case you could spur a mini radial via a fused connection unit.

Do these sockets have to look neat (as in flush sunk) or can you hide them up under the cupboard a bit and put them on the surface?

[spuorgelgoog]

Mainline Power is a busbar trunking system. A quick look at one of their su ppliers suggests about £70 for a two metre starter kit of track.

df

(The actual mainlinepower website is a flash-based effort.)

If you do use discrete sockets they look much better if evenly spaced to ma tch the tile spacing.

Owain

[Huge]

Now that's clever. Thanks, I shall look into that!

Pity their bloody web site doesn't work here, even though I do have Flash installed!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Assume nothing. I've seen spurs with multiple sockets before now.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

If you're re-tiling, makes fitting new sockets that much easier as the cable will go behind the tiles so don't need to be made good perfectly.

It's well worth drawing out the wall(s) to scale on the computer and also the tiles, and the sockets so you take the guesswork out of how to space them.

Sockets neatly fitted between an even number of tiles etc looks the biz.

[Brian Gaff]

One of the issues with socket bars is that they seem not to be with wall warts in mind and often they cannot be used as they dislodge the adjoining plug, or simply refuse to go in cos they are too wide. Brian

[Tricky Dicky]

If you want to get a row of sockets with no gap between the front plates th en you need to space the back boxes 14mm apart. I recently installed 3 doub le sockets in such a way, to keep them correctly aligned and easy to level I pop riveted two metal strips to the back of the back boxes this ensured t he 14mm gaps were maintained and all the boxes were in line. All the front plates are perfectly adjacent to one another and also perfectly level.

Richard

[stuart noble]

Then I can sleep soundly tonight

[Tim Watts]

One of mine isn't.

It's really annoying - I got the whole room's worth level with a laser line - but one must have skewed slightly as it was screwed in and now it's plastered...

I think I will keep it as a memorial to my perfectionism (in contrary way). Sadly it is a high level worktop one on a wall that will be tiled, so even more obvious. When the rest are near perfect, the one that is rotated by about 4mm tends to show up.

I did joke to SWMBO that I could chop it out and do it again. She nearly killed me...

[Mike Clarke]

Aaargh! That's what the previous owner of this place did. Problem is he must have got them at 13.9mm apart so it's well nigh impossible to replace the middle one in a row without a lot of force and you get a nasty grime collecting crevice between them. Also he didn't manage to get the vertical alignment right and a 1mm error is really conspicuous when they're cheek by jowl. Far neater IMHO to keep them an inch or two apart.

[John Rumm]

No, kitchens are no longer "special locations" in the latest edition of the approved doc.

(not that I expect the OP to care!)

[John Rumm]

If you are retiling, then doing what you suggest and running a wall chaser between them all is fairly quick and easy.

Alternative approaches include the angled sockets designed for installation under cabinets.

Personally I subscribe to the festoon the place with doubles approach - that way it does not matter if you end up covering some up etc, there are still adequate elsewhere.

[Huge]

[22 lines snipped]

*grin*

Spot on.

You're talking to a man who has a standard 3 pin socket in his bathroom, about a metre above the wash basin (it's where the night-light plugs in, so I don't have to put on a light when I go for a wee in the night.) I shall replace it with a blanking plate when we move out.

[spuorgelgoog]

Good idea.

I'd have mine nearer the toilet though :-)

Owain