I need electricity outside in order to run a small water feature and some lights, nothing heavy duty. Taking a cable right back to the consumer unit will be a pain due to the layout of the house. Is it OK to run two fused spurs off the kitchen ring, one for the fountain the other for the lights? Or should I reconcile myself to lifting floorboards and chasing plaster? I'm aware of the need for RCD protection.
That should be fine, unless the water feature or lighting is high power (i.e. a big fountain or floodlights). Kitchen rings are often highly loaded with high power appliances, so there isn't much spare for always on equipment. A couple of light bulbs and a tiny pump shouldn't make too much difference, but check their ratings and check how much other stuff you've got in the kitchen, or you'll be getting nuisance trips or overheated cables. I actually have a separate 32A radial for the dishwasher/washing machine/tumble dryer, so my kitchen ring is hardly loaded at all.
I would ensure that the RCD protection is done via an RCD fused spur (I'd only use one shared one, not two like you suggested, as they are expensive and ugly). If the kitchen ring is protected already at the consumer unit (which I would recommend), then I would probably find another circuit to use, as the outside electrics are quite likely to blow the RCD, which will be particularly bad if you don't have a non-RCD fridge circuit.
Christian.
Why two spurs, the current for lights and a fountain pump will be tiny.
You can get fused RCD spurs by the way to make it even simpler.
Thanks for the advice (and Chris). I was planning on two spurs because I wanted the pump and the lights to be independently controllable. I suppose I could have a single spur protected by one RCD device and then split it radially after the RCD and switched separately?
Yes you could, and I was going to suggest that.
You could have one spur with, say, a 5A fuse and RCD and then after it use a double gang light switch to control the pump and the lights.
If you are talking about a lot of halogen type lights then you can easily get to over 1kW and at that point need to have a higher capacity circuit for the lighting. In that case, it might work out less expensive to have two spur units and make the switch on each the operating one.
.andy
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On Tue, 18 May 2004 19:07:49 +0100, in uk.d-i-y Andy Hall strung together this:
That's how I usually do it, as there are normelly only a few low wattage lights in an ornamental arrangement.
If there's a lot of high power lighting you could run the supply through an RCD spur with a 10A fuse then through a 10A two gang switch and fit an unswitched fused spur to protect the pump with a 3A fuse or whatever it requires to one side of it and leave the full 10A, less the rating of the pump, for the lighting.
it might work out
I have done precisely that with my outside sockets, lights and pond features - using the equivalent of
I'm not sure it's *strictly* to regs because, although the Screwfix RCD units break both live and neutral, the contact separation may technically be too small. I have chosen to ignore that!
On Tue, 18 May 2004 20:28:08 +0100, in uk.d-i-y "Set Square" strung together this:
It is.
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