Are there any reasons why I couldn't fit a 3A fused spur off the lighting ring for a bathroom shaver socket?
I figure on mounting the fuse plate high up on the wall, near the ceiling, where the wire will enter and chasing the cable the rest of the way to the shaver socket.
Thanks.
Both my bathroom shaver light/sockets are wired this way. The fused connection units (unswitched) are on the floor in the attic however, rather than in the bathrooms.
On Wed, 11 Jan 2006 16:15:39 -0000 someone who may be "JustMe" wrote this:-
Yes and no. Five things.
1) if you are in England or Wales and need to ask this question then you probably don't meet John Prescott's ideas for inspecting your own work.2) standard lighting circuits are not ring circuits.
3) if the room contains a fixed bath or shower then you must use a shaver supply unit with an isolating transformer. A shaver socket is unacceptable.4) shaver supply units (and shaver sockets) can be wired directly into a domestic lighting circuit, which is fused at 5 or 6A.
5) look out the 2000 Amendment to the Wiring Regulations to find out where the shaver supply unit can be located and how the cables can be run. Do you know what Zone 1 is?
Lighting isn't a ring circuit. You con't need a fused spur on a 5 or 6A circuit. The shaver socket _must_ be of the large heavy type which includes an isolating transformer. You _must_ make sure all the earth bonding is up to spec for the bathroom, including a connection to the earth wire of the lighting circuit. Make sure it's positioned at least 60cm horizontally from the edge of a shower of bath, 60cm away from taps, and not anywhere where it's liable to be sprayed by water (see bathroom electrical zoning diagrams on the web for details).
No - but you don't need an FCU for a shaver socket fed from a lighting circuit, anymore than you need an FCU for a light. Bathroom shaver sockets (transformer isolated) have internal fusing to protect them.
Logically, I don't see why not - as the average electric shaver draws less than 15W whereas most tungsten lamps start from 30W. In the bathroom, our 25?VA Crabtree transformer-isolated Shaver unit, which has a user's rocker switch for 115V and 240V, runs chased out 750mm below its 2A fused spur box fitted near top of same wall, en/disabled by our second lighting pull-switch that mainly controls two x 60W wall lights. The first puller interrupts the 100W ceiling light. BTW All our lighting circuits in our 10-yr old extension were run off two x
1.5mm2 Ring mains [IMO it was so simple and useful to return a roughly-10m tail from the "end" of Upper and of Lower floor T&E daisy-chains to the 2 properly-labelled MCBs in the CU, whatever anybody else says about ring ccts]. JimOn Wed, 11 Jan 2006 20:11:36 GMT someone who may be "Jim Gregory" wrote this:-
Simple perhaps, though not as simple as not doing this.
Useful? In what way is it useful?
Thanks for all the replies. Was aware of distance from water and of using shaver with transformer built in, but didn't know some of the finer details. I'll get an electrician to check out the earthing and do the non-wall-chopping parts of the job.
Easier to test.
Christian.
On Fri, 13 Jan 2006 13:03:00 -0000 someone who may be "Christian McArdle" wrote this:-
Why? Which tests in particular?
Continuity tests back at the consumer unit. You can tell a lot on a genuine ring by just comparing the resistance readings on the 3 conductors. (i.e. loose connections etc.)
A radial circuit doesn't have this advantage. However, it is only a minor one and I'm not convinced that the disadvantages of having a non-standard configuration don't outweigh it.
Christian.
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