Best electrical layout

[leenowell]

Thanks John. I thought the conclusion above was that I wouldn't need to have a separately fused run for the light circuit?

Thanks

Lee.

[John Rumm]

You don't absolutely need it[1], but it would be a better bit of design with it there IMHO because it would give you more freedom of choice with lamp wiring and fittings. However much depends on the circumstances and what you want to wire lighting wise. So for example if you are using a lamp fitting that requires protection at less than 20A, or if you LED lighting transformer says it should be protected by a 3A fuse etc then you are still ok.

[1] In that the head end 20A MCB will still likely clear a fault on the 1.5mm^2 section of cable, although you would need to check lengths and impedances to be sure.

[leenowell]

Thanks for the clarification John I hadn't thought about the fuse requireme nts of the transformers. I guess I would need to do that seperately anyway as the fuse in the FCU is likely to be more than 3amp for all the lights?

Just taken the existing socket apart and the supply is indeed 6mm and a pig to work with. How the electrician got this into the socket is beyond me... . No fit for any other cable so will need to connect this to a 30amp termin al connectors then wire this socket and the feed to the new junction box fr om that....

Thanks again

Lee.

[Mike Clarke]

Only if you intend to install more than 720 watts of lighting|

Your earlier post mentioned a couple of 24w lamps plus a couple of LED strips - half an amp should cover that lot.

[ARW]

So fit a waterproof one or use an unstitched FCU to supply the lights.

One point to note is that hi-tuff cable is not suitable for burying in the ground if that was your plan.

[leenowell]

No wasn't planning on burying the Hi-tuff. It is essentially being run in/ behind some outdoor kitchen units and then cemented into a garden wall for the lights.

Just wanted to double check also that there is no issue with me stripping t he Hi-tuff down to the 3 individual wires (ie removing the outer most 2 lay ers) to connect the SWA to the existing socket. The SWA terminates in this socket so am changing it to terminate with a connection block and then feed ing that back to the original socket. Will clearly run anything that goes o utside this box with the cable intact. This would give me some space and fl exibility in the back box as this 6mm stuff is a pain.

[John Rumm]

Depends on what those lights are... with LED lamps, 3A is a lot of lighting! (even with filament lamps, its still over 700W)

If you go for one of the external junction boxes (the 32A one I linked to), they have quite large (removable) terminal strips that will take

6mm^2 easy enough with room to spare.

[tabbypurr]

3A, 5A, 6A are all fine for small lighting loads like yours. FWLIW I don't think you'd be able to run 700W of filament lamps on a 3A fuse.

NT