New cooker - questions for all you wise wise people!

[Highland Grace]

Hello

Firstly - can I just say thanks in advance for help :)

Moving into a house where we are pulling out & replacing kitchen - previous cooker is all electric, however we want to put in an electric oven / gas hob.

Q1. We are not sure if there is a gas point at all. How difficult / how much would it be to get a Corgi man out to put one in? There is already gas central heating in the house. And how much would he charge to fit the hob?

Q2. Would we have to have the worktop cut & ready for him coming? (How sexist - it may well be a lady ....sorry if I have offended anyone!!)

Q3. I am assuming that it will be easy enough to fit the electric oven ....?

Q4. What kind of fan / extracter etc will we need by law? We do have a window but the cooker can't go on the same wall as it i.e to take air outside.

Thank you so much!

[Highland Grace]

Hello

Firstly - can I just say thanks in advance for help :)

Moving into a house where we are pulling out & replacing kitchen - previous cooker is all electric, however we want to put in an electric oven / gas hob.

Q1. We are not sure if there is a gas point at all. How difficult / how much would it be to get a Corgi man out to put one in? There is already gas central heating in the house. And how much would he charge to fit the hob?

Q2. Would we have to have the worktop cut & ready for him coming? (How sexist - it may well be a lady ....sorry if I have offended anyone!!)

Q3. I am assuming that it will be easy enough to fit the electric oven ....?

Q4. What kind of fan / extracter etc will we need by law? We do have a window but the cooker can't go on the same wall as it i.e to take air outside.

Thank you so much!

[Lobster]

Depends on how far the existing gas supply is from where you want the hob fitting, and how complicated the route will be for the new pipework. If it's any help, I recently paid about 200 quid to have a gas hob and gas oven fitted, where there was a gas pipe feeding a boiler on the adjacent wall; this also included a landlord's gas certificate which you wouldn't need.

Definitely. You certainly want to avoid him having to come back and hitting you with a second callout charge if it's not ready (and sexist or not, I have yet to be visited by a female gas fitter!)

Most likely, yes. The only problem I can think of is that if you are haven't already got a dedicated cooker circuit (which is unlikely if you were previously all-electric) and if the oven you want to fit is one which requires a dedicated circuit (usually obvious because it won't come with a 13A plug attached, but needs checking).

By law, nothing as far as I'm aware, because you are refurbishing an existing kitchen and if you don't already have an extractor you aren't forced to fit one. NB however there are separate rules due to fitting a gas appliance, especially if it's a very small kitchen - see the gas-fitting FAQ at:

David

[Brian Sharrock]

snip:

Assuming that you referring to a 'built-in' electric oven: - You will need a housing unit secured to the wall and with an aperture suitable to house the oven. IIRC there should be a cooker outlet within the housing unit confines to connect the oven's cable to AND there must be a switch -within a certain distance (2 mtr?) to isolate the oven's electrics. One further point; - read the installation instructions.! I discovered (!) afterwards that the doors of my oven came off quite readily AND THEY ARE VERY HEAVY (but with a 'knack' shown in the manual) which would have made it an easy lift rather than the 'superman' lift that I nearly killed myself attempting. BTW, I placed the oven on a workmate then 'eased' it into the housing aperture.

HTH

[David Hansen]

On 8 Jan 2006 07:51:23 -0800 someone who may be "Highland Grace" wrote this:-

That depends on how easy it is:-)

1) You need a suitable circuit. If there is not one (to the right place) then there is much to be said for fitting a 30/32A (or even 45A) one, to allow future flexibility in fitting electric hobs/ovens and the like. Fitting a 30/32A circuit will be little more expensive than fitting a 15A or 20A one (which would cover a single oven and perhaps a double oven). Fitting a 45A circuit will be somewhat more expensive, unless the cooker is very close to the consumer unit. 2) The circuit will need to incorporate a two pole switch, within 2m of the oven. 3) The traditional outlet from the circuit is a cooker connection unit, essentially a terminal block behind a cover. However, if you are only fitting a relatively small oven then a fused connection unit is a good alternative, to ensure the oven and wiring is properly protected. 4) Switches with socket outlets in them are a throwback to the days of old. It is best to provide sockets as part of a ring main. 5) While it is, in theory, permissible to wire a relatively small oven (up to 16A) into a ring main, this is nearly always a bad idea. Kitchen ring mains tend to be heavily loaded with washing equipment and kettles anyway, adding another heavy and steady load to the ring is not a good idea. 6) You need a suitable cabinet to hold the oven. You also need a suitable means of getting the oven into the cabinet (and possibly out). They are heavy things.

[Lobster]

[sorry HG, I wrote and sent the following immediately after the above, but for some reason it got hung up in my outbox!]

I forgot to mention that I think you'd be very well advised to add an extractor of some sort anyway, eg a cooker hood extracting through the wall? The building regs were updated in that regard for good reason! Don't muck about with a 'recirculating' cooker hood which contains very expensive charcoal filters and does nothing about ventilation anyway. They aren't difficult to fit, especially so if your hob's on an outside wall.

David