A few electrical questions

[John Rumm]

While true, I can't see anyone being happy to work on a heating system if its not possible to isolate it adequately.

[David Robinson]

Yes, but last time they must have done something to facilitate it? At least remove the fuse or flick the MCB feeding the relevant circuit. Or just switch the whole house off if unsure.

I bet either it was dark, or the engineer needed to be somewhere else.

Cheers, David.

[John Rumm]

Quite possibly - without further input from the OP we will probably never know. It seems odd that there is no method of isolation anyway, since its actually quite hard to imagine a way of wiring it all up without having a FCU or something similar somewhere, or even as you suggest a heating related circuit that can be turned off at the CU. Perhaps if the only available option was the last one, then that was the stumbling block - since "off" at an MCB is not the same as "isolated" in the strict sense.

[ARWadsworth]

I wired a new boiler up a few weeks ago. The old boiler had been installed by BG. The only isolation was the MCB (on it's own circuit)

[Lobster]

You surprise me - I've fitted precisely three new (ie single, built-in) ovens in the past 5 years, and all of them did have a 13A plug prefitted.

David

[jgharston]

..and then while the turkey's cooking you decide to do some laundry, make a cup of tea and do some toast. Then the fridge decides to come on...... POP!

JGH

[John Rumm]

So the turkey is cooking drawing say 600W average, the washing machine wants 2.5kW for 10 mins, 3kW for the kettle, and a few hundred watt for the fridge... sounds like you would be hard pushed to draw even 6kW there. (you can normally ignore very short temp loads like a kettle in your power demand estimates).

Kitchen power circuits frequently are the most heavily loaded general purpose circuits in a domestic setting - but even then it is very rare to get a trip due to sustained overload.

[Terry Fields]

IMHO BG verge on being crooks.

Had a back boiler/gas fire based CH system installed 30 years ago. It wasn't long before BG started: "No flue plate, not up to modern standards", then "can't get the spares for this", then "ventilation too low". ITMT the service technicians use a smoke candle to test the draught by holding it next to the gas fire heat outlet grille rather than the boiler inlet (which was just above floor level).

ISTM that they are trying it on with the electrics. I wouldn't mind betting they'll offer to do a rewire for you at only twice the price you'd pay for a specialist.

My advice is the same as the others have suggested: dump BG and get a better service technician/company.

This house is a BG-free zone: YKIMS.

TF

[Tabby]

What's often not appreciated is that a 30/32A circuit happily supplies well north of 30A for a while. The scenario stated is not a problem.

NT

[Tabby]

Pulling a CU fuse would do the job fine. Yes, its not truly isolated, and yes, you could turn the whole CU off if necessary. Don't forget we're jsut talking a service here. The whole proposed problem and solution seem bogus to me.

NT

[Huge]

There's no "verge" about it. They're crooks, liars and thieves and I will have nothing to do with them.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

How does the service engineer know it is a DP type? Older ones were SP.

[John Rumm]

If in doubt loosen the cover on the switch and look...

[Roger Chapman]

Hmm. I fitted a roller shutter garage door a few years ago. The destructions specified plug and socket. When I queried this I was told I could of course use a FCU for isolation but most electricians preferred plug and socket.

I have a FCU for boiler isolation but it is by the programmer, not the boiler. Is this now deprecated?

[jgharston]

My brother's kitchen would repeatedly pop in the above circumstances until I rewired everyhting to give him a seperate kitchen ring and a seperate circuit for the oven and hob.

(This was also the house with a borrowed live on the stair lights - ouch!)

JGH

[dennis]

3kW kettle 2kW microwave 2kw dishwasher heating water 2kw washer heating water 2kW for the vac. Then there is the oven and the plug in fish fryer and the plug in induction hob.. It's easy to get to 6kW.

[geoff]

Holds hand up

Although I always tell people to do so

[John Rumm]

Ignore that generally - its too short term to count.

Hobs generally are not plug in unless very small one or two ring jobbies.

Your point being what exactly? Kitchens can quite often pull 9kW for short periods - however the roster of things listed in the post I was replying to added up to less than 6kW.

[John Rumm]

yup kitchen plus rest of house, and cooking facilities is quite a different matter!

[dennis]

One ring, 2.4kW (IIRC) £30 in lidl last week.

Good job people don't buy four of them. ;-)