Due to a kitchen reorganisation, I now have a spare 15A circuit, was immersion heater, and a spare 30 amp circuit was cooker, also a spare 5 amp circuit in the kitchen. All directly wired from Consumer units with *wire* fuses.
How many 13 amp sockets can I put on the 15amp and 30amp circuits?
Most of the wiring will be behind built in units, do I need to put trunking round it?
I'm not clear whether you mean to hang sockets off already insitu wiring or whether you just want to leave the fuses rated as they are and wire from them. But the rules are as follows:
Radial Circuits. Fuse should be 20A, cable needs to be 2.5mm, room size must be less than 20 Sq Meters. Alternatively fuse at 32A, cable 4mm room size 50 sq meters. In both cases the number of sockets is unlimited.
Ring circuits. Fuse should be 32A, cable 2.5mm. Room size is unlimited and number of sockets is unlimited.
I would place any wiring behind the plaster board and not just leave behind the units.
I thought rings where limited to 100m^2?
Who said there was any plasterboard to put anything behind? This could well be a proper house with real walls not a modern cardboard box... B-)
Assuming the fusing is correct for the cable you can have as many 13 amp outlets as you like on what is a radial. Of course this might not be satisfactory in practice on the 15 amp one.
Yes, although that and the figures Bob quoted are just guidelines, not part of the regs. If you know what the likely loading in a given area is going to be, base it on that instead. For a kitchen, I would assume a higher loading than those guideline figures.
Why? It's much safer lying behind the units where it's visible, rather than concealing it and then having to comply with the permitted areas for concealed wiring.
Owain
yes you're right (6:3:2)
Then I'd chase out
To all intents and purposes, as many as is required / sensible...
However, it is simple enough to change the size of the protective device to something more appropriate if required.
You don't need trunking. You should stick to the permitted zones however if the cable is not visible (i.e. chased in etc).
50 m^2 now.
75 m^2.
You're posting information that is way out of date. These recommendations were changed around 1998, during the life of the 1992 version of BS 7671.
Max. floor area for the standard ring is 100 m^2 as already mentioned.
I replaced my very old "wire" fuses with circuit breakers, a long time ago. Replacing the fuse wire was "a pain in the neck".
Sylvain.
I had a 'fuse wire' CU here for about 30 years - re-wired when I bought the house. And only ever had *one* fuse blow - I'd underestimated the ground floor lighting load.
If re-wiring blown fuses is a pain, you need to find out just why they're blowing as it shouldn't be a common occurrence. I've had an MCB trip when a bulb goes but never a fuse.
I think that we may have "our wires crossed". There is a main fuse for the all house; and on my floor there were 2 fused (wire) circuits. One at 5 amp for the lighting, and one at 30 amp for power. All I did was to replace the fuses with re-settable devices. There were no MCB'S (or whatever). I don't think that I changed fuses frequently, but doing just one is (was) still "a damn nuisance". These circuit breakers are _very_ convenient.
Sylvain.
|In article , | Sylvain VAN DER WALDE wrote: |> I replaced my very old "wire" fuses with circuit breakers, a long time |> ago. Replacing the fuse wire was "a pain in the neck". | |I had a 'fuse wire' CU here for about 30 years - re-wired when I bought |the house. And only ever had *one* fuse blow - I'd underestimated the |ground floor lighting load. | |If re-wiring blown fuses is a pain, you need to find out just why they're |blowing as it shouldn't be a common occurrence. I've had an MCB trip when |a bulb goes but never a fuse.
In my 40 years in this house, I have never had a wire fuse blow, unless there was a short somewhere, so I am unwilling to replace them with MCBs.
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