Surface mount sockets

We have a brick wall in our house which we want to leave unplastered as a feature. It needs to have a lightswitch and a double socket on it.

Since chasing the wall would look ugly, I'm trying to find something which is surface mounted and that will look vaguely industrial/old fashioned rather than tacky and white plastic.

Is anyone aware of a manufacturer that has anything like this? The only surface mount stuff I can find at the moment is grey.

The other options seem to be drilling straight through the wall and running the wires up the other side, or running the wires up the cavity (strangely it's a cavity wall although it is internal: a relic of how the extension was built). Neither of these, I think, are allowed under the wiring regulations.

Reply to
Jim
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Tryy here - any number of options:

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sure how many of these designs have bespoke surface-mounting boxes, which is what you'll need, but there are certainly brass boxes available, and also definitely steel ones if you want the 'industrial' look.

David

Reply to
Lobster

If you've got a bit of spare cash, then you could consider using bare pyro. If you don't finish it, then it goes dark and blends in with brick/stone quite quickly. Also, as you fix it with p-clips, it will conform well with the wall.

You don't have to wire the whole circuit in pyro, just the bits on show.

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Reply to
Dave Osborne

What looks best for that IMHO is a good quality metal surface mount fitting wired in surface MICC cable with the PVC protective sleeve removed, if you can't find it bare to start with. MICC looks like a small copper pipe but can be bent by hand. The fitting to the box rather like a brass compression fitting. As regards the fittings, look at all the large maker's sites to find out which looks best to you. I've seen them in brushed stainless and brass as well as painted grey.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Thanks for that suggestion - I hadn't thought of MICC.

I've had a look at various websites, though, and I can't for the life of me find anyone who makes the brushed stainless or brass surface mount boxes. I'm sure I've seen them somewhere!

Reply to
Jim

TLC as per my previous post certainly do brass ones

Reply to
Lobster

I guess you mean these?

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don't really think they're suitable, unfortunately.

Reply to
Jim

I know Crabtree once did as I've got the brushed chrome ones.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Lewden (very industrial, art deco style, 5A 13A 15A 30A) or Clipsal (modern knockoff).

I would bring the cable in from the rear. Run oval or round conduit down the other side into a BESA box sunk into the wall, rear exit the BESA into the rear of whatever you choose. No problem feeding a tape down with magnet, snap onto a magnet puller and pulling through - along with conventional FTE. Permits cable replacement easily in the future. You could sink the socket/ light switch and use brass faceplates, just realise moving them requires quite a bit of future work if you change your mind :-) For a horizontal run do the same re two leg conduit box and chase the wall the other side horizontally. BESA boxes work well for this kind of stuff - same with wall lights although some require architrave if the light fitting itself is quite narrow.

Cable running down the wall may work , but a socket/switch sat "cleanly" on a brick wall can look much better. Consider the outside of your house - do you prefer cables running down to an accessory or a lone accessory & lone light on the wall? Most people prefer the latter with the cables hidden, particularly with FP200G/BS8436 being white.

Reply to
js.b1

I've been in touch with a mate of mine who runs St John's Hill Lighting near Clapham Junction. He's a real fount of all knowledge on things like this having been in the trade all his life. And reckons no one makes other than painted metal clad anymore. So it would be down to using a standard flush fitting brass or whatever with the matching metal box for surface mounting - he reckons the MK ones look ok. I've never seen one in the flesh.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

MICC as they suggested is one choice...

In fact all of these may be ok in this case. You could go through the wall and up a chase in the other side - if the other side is visible through a door way etc. If its not then you could use MICC or earthshield in the chase. The rules against using a cavity are there to prevent moisture bridging usually. Since this wall is no longer external, it sounds like that is no longer an issue.

Reply to
John Rumm

Old metal conduit rescued from a skip?

Isn't MICC/Pyro a bit of skill to terminate?

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Quite a bit north of =A350 for tools & glands, =A32 per metre of cable.

Reply to
js.b1

To paraphrase apple, there's a wiki for that:

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Reply to
John Rumm

What about some nice 20mm Galv Conduit with 1Gang Metal boxes. Cheap to buy and great fun to bend.

Reply to
Camdor

Would there be anything wrong with some nice polished copper tube as 'conduit'?

Reply to
Bob Eager

It's very expensive to buy (if you have to buy 100m of cable), very expensive to terminate (if you have to buy glands in packs of ten, when you only need 2 or 4), expensive on tools which can only be used for to terminate pyro/micc and it requires skill and practice to make it look good. A lot of younger sparks will never have used it outside college, if ever.

Your best bet, if you wanted a bit of pyro doing, would be to get in touch with your local theatre and ask them for the name of their maintenance electrician. Theatres were (and are) often wired in micc because of its ultimate fireproof nature, so the maintenance electrician will necessarily be geared up to do micc work.

Reply to
Dave Osborne

The Lewden 'Weathertight' range are what you want, a classic chunky design with no crappy little plastic switches, they have threaded entries for steel conduit, MICC, PVC/SWA etc.

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Reply to
alexander.keys1

No, except for the fact that you would have to earth it with a Tenby clamp! Yummy :-)

Reply to
Dave Osborne

For the lightswitch, the main intrusion is probably the cable, so use a wireless switch.

For the socket, could you mount something at floor level eg

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metal conduit you have a choice of black enamelled or galvanised, the standard MK Metalclad are grey
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you can recess the socket into the wall then you could use one with a metal flap over it eg
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Reply to
Owain

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