Tumble Drier in Bathroom

[Fredrick Skoog]

Hi All,

This seems to be a question that comes up occasionally but a Google trawl hasn't turned up all the information that I need so I was hoping someone can give me a definite answer. Maybe I'm not Goggling effectively enough so if the info is out there and I haven't found it - sorry!

My situation is that I'm putting a tumble drier into my bathroom; it's a good 1.5m away from the bath so as far as I can gather that puts it into Zone C according to the IEE regulations which is ok for such a machine. So far so good. However, in my airing cupboard, also located in a Zone C area, is the pump that services the power-shower and this is powered from a standard power socket. I was going to use this socket to also supply the drier (albeit not at the same time as using the pump). The socket is deep in the depths of the cupboard and has an extremely remote chance of being sprayed by anything. Equally the cable running to the socket from the drier will be a good meter away from the bath. I know this isn't ideal but can anyone see anything dodgy about this?

Thanks.

[stefek.zaba]

Dodginess aplenty. The relaxations which created the Zones, allowing fixed appliances and normal fittings in Zone 3 and outside the Zones, firmly continue *not* to allow standard 13A sockets, as it's considered (rightly in my unqualified opinion) much too tempting for some mumpty to plug in some portable appliance or other - hair dryer being just one of the obvious ones - with which they proceed to electrocute themselves the more efficiently through all that earth-reference cross-bonded metalwork all around.

But making it undodgy is not hard at all. Replace the single standard power socket with a pair of fused connection units. (You've got them in a cupboard, so can use a surface-mounting dual box to avoid any chanelling out; and you can run one of them - marginally preferably the one to the power-shower-pump since that's the smaller load - as a spur off the other one, should you be unlucky enough to have incoming cables too short to reach another few inches along. As they're both FCUs it's also OK if that shower-pump socket is itself a spur, since the Fs in the FCUs will provide overload protection for the feeding cable.) With FCUs there's no longer anywhere for mumpty to plug in portable applianceses.

HTH - Stefek

[Chris Oates]

I'd rather work with you than some of the 'qualified' peeps I get to work with.

At work we're now allowed to not bond/earth some equipment parts where the risk outweighs the benefit

Good stuff as usual Stefak

In an endeavour to electrocute myself I use an extension lead to get power to my hair cutting gadget in the bathroom - where there's a will there's a way.

(RCD's do not work the 'other' side of a transformer)

[Suz]

It's numpty, numpty

[Lurch]

I don't think it really matters in this case. If you're think of sticking appliances in a bathroom you could be either, or both.

[Fredrick Skoog]

Thanks Stefek,

That was exactly the sort of succinct, no nonsense reply I wanted.

Cheers

[Paul C. Dickie]

In article , Fredrick Skoog writes

Would it not be safer to use towels like everyone else?