Metalclad sockets

I tend to use conduit couplers with a male bush either end. You could cut it down if you wanted them closer together.

Assuming you don't need metal conduit between the sockets, then 20mm plastic conduit with the solvent weld couplers on the ends ought to do it:

Andy Dingley has brought this to us :

A 20mm galv coupling and two brass bushes between each socket.

I'm trying to close couple them though, so that the faceplates are almost touching.

I don't particularly need metallic connection between them as, even if I did, I'd still need to put copper between the earth bonding terminals.

Andy Dingley brought next idea :

Then the only way to do it properly is with 20mm nipples, a couple of lock rings for spacers and locknuts in the boxes.

Double nipple from the black iron fittings section, and flat nuts. The hex middle will be your spacer.

In fact I misread your original post... I was assuming a row of spaced out sockets. Yup I would have thought a rubber grommet in each knockout, and a length of T&E spanning the (very small) gap would be fine. The sockets themselves will provide impact damage for the cable simply by their proximity.

Conduit coupling and two male bushes.

Where do you find those though? I've used some of those (stock from half-a-century ago), but trying to buy any more the wholesalers have looked at me as if I was planning to suckle a witch's familiar with it.

Mike

I didn't think that conduit used BSP threads. It's something fine, I believe.

Sounds OK to me.

Black iron /gunbarrel fittings are readily available from local suppliers to me, so must be made in quantity somewhere and there will be a stockist nearby to you. I just get them from the farmers' store, but wholesale plumbing stockists do them too.

Use plumbing nuts, then. ffs.

In message , Grimly Curmudgeon writes

I thought that you should be wary of mixing plumbing and electrics, or doesn't it work that way in this case?

When I recently moved a twin 13A socket in my 1930s home I did find that the metal conduit was 1/2" BSP which was "fun" after I had gone to the trouble of threading a length of 22mm to replace it and found the old nuts wouldn't fit :-(

It all seems a bit OTT to me. I would just get the router out and route some suitable slots in a length of plastic conduit and thread the intermediate boxes on it and terminate the ends. The back boxes are screwed to the wall!?

That's a pipe fitting though. I haven't tried this, but extrapolating from the similar fittings I have for the compressed air plumbing, it's not going to tighten flat against a sheet, as the thread and the nut faces (such as they are) are some distance apart.

What would be ideal are the old brass fittings I'm using, a double male nipple, but I can't find a supplier for any more of them.

Conduit changed from imperial to metric about the same time as cable did. And although close, the threads ain't the same. Rather like socket fixing screws which went from IIRC 5BA to 3.5mm.

In message , "dennis@home" writes

This was a fairly thin wall with sockets either side and they had used conduit through the wall to join the backs of the two boxes together. When the wall was partially demolished and rebuilt I went to do something similar and re-use the original nuts.