Sockets in Cupboards

[TheScullster]

Hi all

Does anyone have a BS7671 (or associated standard) reference for the accepability of sockets in cupboards please? It seems to be normal practice for under worktop appliances in a kitchen to be powered by a socket at the back of an adjacent cupboard. Initially I intended to put a switched fused spur above and drop below worktop level to the socket, but it appears I may be making work for myself with all this. With the number of appliances climbing ever higher, there won't be any space left on the walls for tiles! Either spurred sockets or sockets on the ring below the worktop can be incorporated more easily in some locations.

Thanks

Phil

[Andrew Gabriel]

No problem. I have a socket in the back of each floor-standing cupboard, even though few of them are used.

It's easy with the IKEA kitchen units with no gap at the rear. With other makes, maybe you can surface mount them in deep boxes to bring them forward to be roughly flush with the cupboard rear.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I've never seen the need for easy isolation of things like washing machines - given they have accessible mains switches on them. So IMHO all that's needed is a way of isolating them for service purposes - and a socket in a cupboard covers this.

[stuart noble]

Yep, I've just had a cooker fitted that way by a pukka Pert P firm. How else could it be done without chopping the wall out?

[John Rumm]

Sockets in cupboards are fine gerally, although they should be fixed to a permanent part of the building structure and not the cupboard itself.

Yup.

No need for it to be fused spur - I tend to use a 20A DP switch with neon (the GET Ultimate ones are quite subtle) in the ring above the appliance, and drop a cable from there to an unswitched single socket on the wall in the appliance space itself rather than the adjacent cupboard. With a flush mounted socket it is unlikely to cause problems with the available depth.

More than one switch per 600mm would sound tricky (given the width of most appliances!)

The thing you want to avoid is needing to pull the appliance out in order to isolate it. So if you use the approach I described above, then separate switching is needed really. If you have the sockets in adjacent cupboards, then you don't need the separate switches at all really, since you can use switched sockets, or for that matter, pull out the plug.

[Roger Mills]

I had an interesting discussion about that with the Part-P registered electrician who wired our new kitchen last year. He took the view that built-in units *are* in effect part of the structure[1] and that it was therefore ok to mount sockets in them - screwed to the carcases of the units rather than the wall behind. That is what he did, and self-certified as complying with 17th Edition! The sockets in question are on the ring, not spurs.

[1] After all, you don't take them with you when you move, and they are invariably covered by buildings insurance rather than contents insurance.

[John Rumm]

I don't think its anything worth losing sleep over... personally I would go with what works best in a given situation.

Whether you count a kitchen cupboard as permanent is open to debate. With a full refit it hardly matters, so its only the odd case when one might try to replace a single carcass after suffering water damage that its a bit more of a nuisance if one has to unentangle it from the house electrics in the process.

The important bit, is having an accessible means of isolation for the appliance.

[stuart noble]

And if it's a separate cooker circuit, it's handy to have a switch with a plug socket. Means you can turn everything else off and still have a power source. In my house I'm never 100% sure which socket is on which ring main. Then again, with the 18 volt Makita drill you recommended, I might never use the mains drill ever again :-)

[Huge]

Over the years I've labelled all the sockets and light switches with which circuit breaker they are on.

There are sockets on 3 different rings in the kitchen. :o(

[spamlet]

Plates, cups, saucepans, coffee makers, pasta machines you never got round to using, scales, vases, loads of old jam jars you thought you might need some day... Oh, and somewhere at the back of all this, there may be a plug you want to get at in a hurry, if you've remembered it's there, or the people who sold you the house remembered to tell you...

Kitchens are near enough laboratories these days, for someone to think of designing them with a similar row of angled sockets right along the back of the work surfaces. That would be very handy.

S

[John Rumm]

True, which is where the standalone above worktop isolation switch is preferable.

What like:

not help you plug your under the counter appliance in mind you)

[ARWadsworth]

There is nothing stopping you using trunking and fetching the sockets towards the front of the cupboards.

Adam

[js.b1]

If I recall correctly, Electricians Guide to BR...

- Appliances built in = Isolation above the worktop

- Appliances free standing = Isolation behind the appliance

You could combine switches. Grid modular accessories provide a means to group switches & fuseholders into a single enclosure of 1 to 24 way (MK, GET). Unfortunately switches are limited to 20A so local fusing down is required using up modular spaces and adding wiring complexity. Grid is not particularly common in domestic, but can be usable with say 3-4

20A radials for below couner kitchen appliances and 1-2 32A radial/ rings for above counter sockets. Grid is expensive, fiddly to wire. It is good for pre-labelled DP 20A switches such as washing-machine, dryer, fan, cooker hood, but oddly enough no "shed" !

You could use a single isolator. Break the kitchen if necessary into two 32A radial/rings with two 32A/

45A isolators for each. Again one for above counter sockets & below counter appliances, or left hand-side & right hand-side.

For cookers the isolator needs to be within 2m of the appliance (fire), for built-in appliances the same applies. For other appliances it does not matter and indeed it provides a single point of isolation if say a fire (fire blanket by the switch).

[spamlet]

with switches too. Tried Googling for laboratory bench stuff but can't seem to narrow it down to what I'm thinking of.

Personally, I would be perfectly happy for undercounter devices to feed through holes in the worktop, but I suppose we are not allowed to put our own plugs on these days...

S

[ARWadsworth]

There is no need for any fusing at the grid switch. The fusing is done by the plug on the appliance.

Grid is

Usually a grid switch would just be fed from the 32A ring.

Cheers

Adam

[ARWadsworth]

This sort of thing?

Personally, I would be perfectly happy for undercounter devices to feed

Nothing to stop you putting your own plug on, however the taste police will have you arrested for drilling the worktop.

Adam

[spamlet]

Now we just need them to make something somewhere between this and the super expensive free standing 'purpose made' kitchen range. eg.

>> Personally, I would be perfectly happy for undercounter devices to feed

Ah, but suppose I was to put some nice shiny sst or copper inserts - perhaps even those things that go in the end of Speedfit type plastic pipe, would do the job. After all, if the taste police are now ok about whole pop up socket stacks, I think a few well placed small holes as part of a very handy design feature for the ever mounting number of kitchen devices with leads that are always just the wrong length to fit together where you want them on your work top, would be just fine. Certainly beats chasing out ever more wall sockets, and emptying all the cupboards every time you want to defrost the fridge, or clean the microwave, or get at the washing machine belt or element.

Cheers,

S

[Dave]

Our fridge, freezer and dish washer are all under the counter jobbies. Gas hob plug is available from the cupboard underneath it. Microwave and oven plugs are available if you remove the drawer under the oven. Have I done anything wrong here?

Dave

[js.b1]

Yes, as long as the 20A DP switch on 32A ring is supplying just a single socket (rather than a double socket which permits 2x 13A downstream fuse).

[Tim Watts]

js.b1 wibbled on Wednesday 28 April 2010 21:53

A very interesting point, because I've not come across a double 13A socket that is actually rated at 26A in total. I think the requirement is 20A total.

is a bit stupid, as now there is a useage case that will overload a device and no fuse protection for that use case.