The wood needs to be treated with fire retardant.
The wood needs to be treated with fire retardant.
Actually your original post, and the subject used the word *behind*.
SInce this is a UK newsgroup, it's perfectly reasonable that your question would refer to the common practice of a wooden skirting board attached to the wall with nails or screws.
Fairly obviously the wiring standards are based on the same situation. the reasons are real and practical, given the environment.
You've changed the game as the thread has proceeded, so it's rather silly to moan now when you didn't provide all the information about the situation, but just little pieces.
There is available various forms of skirting trunking system both here and in other countries. Most, but not all is more suited to an office or factory than a home. Although this involves running cables within the band that would normally not be used by dint of the standard if the cable were hidden behind the skirting; this is a different situation.
... and somehow be expected not to hang pictures or shelves above them, duh (as opposed to not hanging them on the skirting board). Mark K
But that is not what you originally said, so yes I am saying that you are stupid and from what you latter went on to say I would suggest that many 7 year old kids have more understanding than you will ever have.
You're a frecking moron IMO.
Hypothetical situation to throw a spanner in the works. What would you say if there was say a utility room on the back of a house, it had been boarded out and plastered over. Used as a storage room for years, the owner of the house then decides he wants electricity in the room.Part P doesnt apply. Floor is concrete, he doesn't want channels dug into the plasterwork to save his wallpaper from being ruined, doesnt want ugly conduit stuck to the wall. When a room is plasterboarded out, they normally leave a gap at the bottom of the boards, enough room for cables to lie underneath and the cables would be at floor level. Skirting board is the type they sell in B&Q, curved at the top on one side, bevelled on the other, curved side on show. Would that be a good enough reason to run cables behind the skiring boards? A lot of people do make use of that No More Nails these days, and even if it was nailed to the wall, the nails wouldnt be right down at floor level. If not, how would this problem be overcome? Obviously a fussy customer but the customer wants it done with the least amount of damage and repair to his room.
Would this be of interest:-
But it may only be suitable(safetywise) for data and low voltage cables?
Keith G. Powell
Picture pins don't go deep; you'd be unlucky to penetrate to typical cable depth (for 'normal' plasterboard + skim, the pins will only just go through into the void). For hollow stud walls, cables will either run loose (so not be penetrated anyway) or be neatly clipped to the side of the stud (if an original fixing). And whether the walls are hollow or hefty-brick, it's rare (no, not impossible, just rare) for socket cables to run *up* the wall - 9 times out of 10 or more they're fed from unnerneaf. Drops from above are common only for lightswitches, which in practice are close enough to the edges of walls to be out of the way of picture hanging.
Now, chummie with his new drill and an unshakeable determination to put up shelves - that's a little different, as the drill bit will go deeper than a picture-hook pin. We're still saved most of the time by the actual typical routing of cable; and in the case where chummie has neither clue nor cable detector, the most likely effect of hitting a cable is a good old flash as he causes an L-to-E or L-to-N short, followed by a callout to an electrician ;-) It's rare indeed (but happened in that MP's daughter's kitchen!) to be so unlucky as to hit only the L, and then put a plug-n-screw in so as to make contact with the copper conductor...
Fortunately I don't have to give a blind f*ck what some snotty little bunch of backward beurocrats deem "allowable", but what's safe and sensible. I will therefore not carve cracks into structural walls in an earthquake zone, nor will I put mains cabling into walls where pictures and shelves are likely to be hung. I will instead construct suitable skirting board to take my wiring and sockets and have a safe, easily inspectable, aestetic and adaptable electrical system that can be rewired, upgraded or modified in a day with the minimal of fuss and expense. Mark K.
Mr Zoom, well go to free and easy Australia, where they make Part P look like anarchy.
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But then the chocolate blocks wouldn't be accessible ...
Owain
Why?
Terminals and unsheathed cores have to be in noncombustible enclosures, but *sheathed* cables are routinely run through wood joists, behind panelling etc.
Owain
Horizontally from visible accessories is a permitted zone. The fact that it's at skirting level doesn't change that.
The point here (for UK regs) is that the permitted zones includes around the top of the room (coving level) but NOT around the bottom of the room (skirting level).
Owain
If you had already decided that this was what you were going to do, why did you bother posting the question with incomplete information in the first place, wasting everybody's time and then behaving obnoxiously?
WDADLHB? ;_}
Lord Hall, I'm glad he is going to an earthquake zone. We already have one loony off to Italy, so things are looking good. All we need is Tone to win the next election and frighten away more loonies.
When are you emigrating?
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I seem to spend as much time out of the country as in it these days, so that's a moot point.
Certainly the thought of Tone not losing (he isn't capable of winning anything) the next election may well frighten a lot of people away.
I think that the only answer is for everybody to vote for me....
enclosures,
But this would not be classed as panelling or structural members, it will be (in effect) a form of trunking and AIUI electrical trunking needs to be non-combustible.
Are you saying that electrical enclosures don't now need to be non-combustible ?
Not if protected by steel conduit or trunking.
Wiring regs apply to all fixed cabling, including extra low voltage data cabling.
The original Part P did apply to all such wiring. I suggested a correction to this in my consultation response, but like most of the responses, that was ignored. When the ODPM realised that you now needed to do a building notice to change the batteries in your doorbell (and for that matter to do any Cat 5 or aerial cabling anywhere as it was not in the list of exemptions), they did issue an update, but I don't recall what it said, except the first correction still excluded anything in the kitchen (i.e. still need a building notice to change batteries in a doorbell in the kitchen). I haven't bothered keeping up with their subsequent updates -- it's just too depressing seeing exactly how incompitent they really are.
Andrew, you may have caused use of extra Parliamentary time.:-)
The amendment was rushed out as
The Building (Amendment) (No.3) Regulations 2004
There were clarifying memos after that.
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