"Malc" wrote | We are thinking of restoring an old house and obviously I will be | doing the wiring myself and getting it inspected as there is no | way that I will be able to hide the fact that I'm doing it.
If you are worried about Part P then (a) as long as you start the job this year, you are outside the scope of Part P (b) if it's a major job (any structural work, new drains, etc) you will be getting Building Regs approval anyway, so just add the wiring on to the same application.
| I was thinking that as most of the floors are likely to be ripped | up I might run steel conduit around as is done in commercial | buildings and use individual wires for L, N and E as is | done in commercial buildings. Would this be ok? I presume I'd | have to use brown, blue and green/yellow wires.
You can do this but -
(a) All conduit must be installed and complete before drawing wiring in. This might not suit if you want to get some parts of the installation finished and powered, albeit temporarily, before others.
(b) It is actually quite difficult to draw in wires into a partially occupied conduit; the conduit must be sized sufficiently for the conductors, and the conductors may have to have derating for grouping factor applied. IOW, you have to plan which conductors will go in which pipe and show this on your plans and calculations. It doesn't lend itself to as-you-go system design.
You might look at plastic conduit and trunking systems. They're much nicer to work with IMHO.
Owain