Morning all,I've just moved into a new (to me) 1950's ish house, and as part of mymoving in, decided to identify which circuits are which breakers are atthe CU.I have two mains rings (upper and lower floors) that have the endsconnected to two breakers.I have found one uk.d-i-y thread dating from 1999 suggesting this asappropriate when connecting more than 10 computers on a single ring,but have not come seen this in anywhere I've lived before. However,this is also the biggest place I've lived, so maybe that's it.So...1) Is / was this normal practice at any time?2) What's the likely impact ? (breakers not tripping in the event of afault?)3) How urgently (if at all) should I look to change it?thanks in advance,Michael.

Please explain less ambiguously.Do the ends of each ring go to the same breaker, or one end to one breakerand one end to the other?You are probably getting confused. There is a type of earthing called "highintegrity" that should be used on computer rings. This involves usingdifferent terminals for the earth conductor at both the consumer unit and atsocket outlets. This means that if one terminal becomes undone, it doesn'ttotally disconnect the earth. It is advisible for all ring circuits, if thesocket outlets have 2 earth terminals.Well, if the ends of a circuit have ended up in 2 different breakers, thenit is a dangerous fault. It has never been allowed and should be fixedrapidly.Quite possibly. It might be possible to seriously overload the ring undersome circumstances. If the current balance is even on both legs and theother ring is unloaded, you might be able to draw 64A through a single ringcircuit.Pretty rapidly. It is a simple fix.Christian.

Ring Mains; ends to different breakers?

May 17, 2006 22 Replies

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m__murray 20 years ago

Interesting... in that case, it may have come about by an (uninformed) connection for connection replacement of the CU, sometime in the more recent past..

I've got someone coming round to do a survey soon.

thanks again to all, results to follow, M.

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usenet 20 years ago

This was a new house designed by my parents, it was very modern for its time and had the new fangled 13A fused square pin plugs throughout and two ring mains wired with two fuses each as I have described above.

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The Natural Philosopher 20 years ago

And is the cable used standard ring stuff?

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