How many mains rings, typically, for 4-bed house?

I'm just curious as to how a typical large house, built today, would be configured, when compared to our 4-bedroom bungalow (1963, extended previously and also by us four years ago).

I'd like to think about whether I should partition some of our existing ring mains, should I have some electrical work done to the house at any point soon.

The four-bedroom bungalow has three ring mains and three lighting circuits (plus more for the garage, external and other bits and bobs). There are actually plenty of spare slots on the consumer unit which is new, replaced when the extension was done in 2009.

Only three of the total of sixteen breakers in our consumer unit are actually associated with the mains wall sockets, or four if you count the one for the cooker.

So, typically, for a house which has: kitchen, dining room, living room, two studies, four bedrooms, hallway, utility room, toilet, bathroom and one en-suite, how many ring circuits for power sockets would be installed for a new build?

Currently, the study and living room power are ringed with one half of the kitchen. It's all a bit odd. The other half of the kitchen (wall adjoining the new utility room) is ringed with the extension. It's all slightly odd.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Kilpatrick
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So, a *six*-bedroom house. For that I'd use three rings. With today's proliferation of electrical kitchen gadgets I'd have one ring for the kitchen+utility room (I presume the utility rooms is where the washing machine would be), one ring for some configuration of "downstairs", and one ring for some configuration of "upstairs".

For yer typical 4-bed house I use two rings and two lights, ground floors+cellar, upstairs+attic. If there's a garage, that has a spur to it's own CU.

jgh

Reply to
jgh

Our house is 5 bedroom (well, 4 and a big study). I ended up with five rings.

- kitchen/utility room as you say.

- living room; on its own because the cable run is a bit tortuous and if I added othee rooms it would have been 'too long'.

- other downstairs rooms.

- bedrooms.

- study (9 computers, etc).

Reply to
Bob Eager

On 16/01/2014 11:49, Michael Kilpatrick wrote:> I'm just curious as to how a typical large house, built today, would be > configured, when compared to our 4-bedroom bungalow (1963, extended > previously and also by us four years ago).

Not sure if it helps ...but this is what I did

Ring 1 Kitchen & Utility Ring 2 Rest of gnd floor excluding garage Ring 3 half of 1st Floor Ring 4 2nd half of 1st floor

This has to be viewed with regard to other power ccts used ...

Radial 1 (non RCCD) Kitchen & Utility (cooker,fridge & Freezer) Radial 2 (non RCCD) Study & comms cupboard Radial 3 Immersion Heater Radial 4 attached Garage

Split of incoming to provide a separate 40A TT supply to outbuildings

Reply to
Rick Hughes

Have you had problems with overloading?

Apart from the kitchen - and possibly some form of workshop - most houses would be happy enough with one for everything else. Assuming you're not using it for heating.

Of course it might be more convenient to have say one per floor each on a RCBO, to prevent a fault on one taking everything out.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

have you had any problems that would solve?

have you had any problems with it?

Sounds very sensible, it gives the kitchen a lot more ampacity and reduces risk of nuisance trips.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

In message , "Dave Plowman (News)" writes

Our house has 3 rings, though rather than up and down stairs it is arrnaged, in areas. The house is fairly largish (in size rather than rooms so much), sort of L shaped , so we have kitchen, Utility and a bedroom and outbuilding (it's an old install, one day they will get it's own supply). on the bottom of the L, and then 2 rings spread across the upwards bit of the L one at each end.

Kinda handy as it means we don't loose all the power on one floor if it goes, or is turned off.

Reply to
chris French

I've got zillions of rings here, more because there seems to be a (advisory?) limit on how many sockets you can put on one ring, and I put sockets everywhere..

Think there are 6 rings, six lighting and 4 spurs on the CU...

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Odd but practical. The days of rooms full of electric heaters (and hence the original rules and regs) are long gone and the only load of note now comes from kitchens and utilities. While a single ring for the kitchen (as many have done here) is a very good idea, having it divied up as you have is perhaps even better. I put forward the often found scenario of turning off the kitchen power while ripping out sockets and moving things about that need a mains powered SDS[1].

[1] Possibly one of the best reasons for keeping an electric-cooker-point-with-socket even if it's a gas stove.
Reply to
Scott M

Seems a bit of a tenuous reason.

I don't imagine most kitchen are very far from sockets outside the room, (and presumably on another cicuit) to plug an extension lead into. Even a socket in the same room would likely require one anyway

Reply to
chris French

The problem is that the current arrangement offends my sense of aesthetics!

No, not really. Apart from trying to work out what goes where.

At the moment I'm just adding a fused spur to feed power to the wireless router which I'm moving into the loft, and to provide power to an wireless access point which I'll site at the far end of the house. I've added the spur to the living/room/study/etc ring, and added another spur for a better power socket for the printer, the cable for which goes down some existing trunking which feeds an external socket outside the study

- rather handy location. I've routed the ethernet cables for the PC and printer down the same conduit so that there no longer any cables floating around in silly places.

I just think the current power arrangement is a bit random. I would be half tempted to separate the two studies to a ring of their own. Not that one PC, a printer, a laptop and an electric piano take any power - it's just that the whole wiring is a dog's dinner and it irritates me. When the consumer unit has so many empty slots it would be better to be able to switch off the study power ring without cutting off half of the rest of the house when doing some work.

At least when the new consumer unit was put in (in one of the studies at one end of the house), the new cables of the mains rings from the unit go to some handy junction boxes where they meet the old ring circuits. This means I can extend the rings or add spurs very easily.

Michael

Reply to
Michael Kilpatrick

There is no advisory on the number of sockets, but there is on the floor area served by the ring (100m^2)

Got three in the house Kitchen/util, upstairs, downstairs. Then another in the workshop.

Reply to
John Rumm

Always try and see the best in every situation! I was really mostly thinking that splitting up the heavy loading of a kitchen into 2 rings as being a good thing. The SDS thing was a sudden extra thought.

It's probably just me but I find extension leads trailing into a room a bloody nuisance as I tend to trip over them or, in the case of my reel, get the power tool lead caught in the handle. In the case of kitchen renovation, which rarely stops the room being a kitchen during the work, keeping some sockets on can only be a good thing for the chef.

Reply to
Scott M

Remember with a shared RCD, just switching off a ring via a single pole MCB won't prevent the RCD tripping if you're working on that ring.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

As a general rule, whenever renovating a room stick in as many new mains sockets as you damned well dan! It baffles me why the previous owners, sometime in the mid 1980s, who converted the garage into two studies, put in so few sockets around the larger study: they are single sockets not doubles! It's an absolute pain. I've got a six-way trailing lead under the desk to power the computer and other bits and bobs. And miscellaneous things such as battery chargers, special chargers for the camera batteries, mobile phone chargers...all these things need somewhere to live. Even back in the 1980s when all these things didn't exist, why would anyone put in a single socket rather than a double?

Michael

Reply to
Michael Kilpatrick

I'm not so keen, you flick off the MCB marked "kitchen/study" but go and work on the one fed from the MCB "kitchen/utility". Of course you will check the bit you are going to working on is off won't you, but ...

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

... and a kettle.

As the lounge etc are usually fairly lightly loaded, having two rings available the kitchen increases the available power to say 2 x (32A - token 5A for other stuff) which is even better than one 32A.

Having the cooker socket not only on a separate MCB but a separate RCD has been a $deitysend when working on stuff.

Owain

Reply to
spuorgelgoog

In all seriousness if the above is reason for a rewire, it may be time to completely reevaluate what youre doing with your life. You only get one.

NT

Reply to
meow2222

I couldn't agree more: In my last house, pretty much every socket was a single when I moved in. Replaced many of them with doublers early on, then had to sink new 'proper' double boxes each time I decorated a room.

I've always assumed it was a matter of keeping the load on the circuit under control, from the days when the only things that were plugged in used a lot of juice, but it was probably just to keep costs down or failure to predict the way things would go forward.

Reply to
GMM

These are the ones I've done over the last ~20 years (all 16th Ed)...

4-bedroom house: Kitchen: 2 rings, 1 RCBO protected for portable applances, 1 not RCD protected for fridge/freezer, central heating, oven, dishwasher. 2 bedrooms (extension) and garage: 1 20A radial (RCBO) Rest of house: 1 ring (RCBO) 3-bedroom house: Kitchen: 2 rings, 1 RCBO protected for portable applances, 1 not RCD protected for fridge/freezer, dishwasher, washing machine. Central heating: 16A dedicated radial (RCBO because boiler in bathroom) Downstairs: 1 ring (RCBO) Upstairs: 1 ring (RCBO) 3-bedroom house: Kitchen + Upstairs: 1 Ring (RCBO) Kitchen: 1 30A radial (RCBO) Oven, dishwasher, kettle. Downstairs: 1 ring (RCBO) Loft: 1 20A radial (RCBO) also feeds bathroom fan-heaters and wall mounted hairdrier. Outdoors: 1 20A radial (10mA RCBO)

In all cases, these were not rewires, but usually just some new circuits, and that restricted the extent to which existing circuits could be redesigned.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

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