Additional socket, is this acceptable?

So you'll just have an extra radial circuit feeding a single socket. Just need to be sure it's clearly labelled at the CU, so anybody in the future working on the circuits won't get a nasty surprise when they think they've isolated all the sockets but have missed one...

(BTW does it need to be a fused spur? Wouldn't a simple JCB do here, if the new socket is the only accessory on the circuit?)

David

First, are you sure it's a 30 amp MCB? Immersions are usually 3 kW, so 16 amp would be usual. You need to identify the cable feeding it as 30 amps is too large for the normal 2.5mm TW&E.

However, you don't need to use an FCU when converting an immersion heater circuit to a radial. Change the MCB to a 20 amp one. You can then have as many sockets on that radial as you wish, as the MCB will prevent overload of the cable.

You're correct, it is a 15A MCB, I confused it with the cooker MCB. I thought fitting an FCU would be better so that if the central heating ever fails and we need emergency hot water I can isolate the additional socket and temporarily reconnect the immersion heater.

Not quite sure how an FCU would make that easier.

If you really want that, fit a socket in the airing cupboard so the immersion can be plugged into that. Wire the new bedroom socket in 1mm flex fed from a plug too. Then all you need to do is swop the plugs.

I hadn't thought of doing it that way, I just prefer hard wiring, feels like the 'right way' to do it.

I wouldn't have thought plugging an immersion heater in to a 13A socket was a good idea? Certainly not as a 'medium' term solution...

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Peter Watson saying something like:

It would, if good quality, cope with it within design limits, but there's so many sub-good plugs and sockets around I would side-step this issue and use a blue 16A industrial plug/socket in the airing cupboard.

Not into a ring, no. But we're talking a radial circuit here. And 13 amp plugs are rated at 3 kW. However, you could always use a 15 or 16 amp type.

Thanks all for your advice