Washing machine/ Utility room/ electricity meters.

[Chris B]

I am planing a kitchen overhaul and it would be nice to get the washing machine out of the kitchen. There is space in the utility room but this would be adjacent to the electricity meters/CU.

Clearly there would be no water connections directly above any electrics so I am struggling to see any major problem. Are there any regulations that I might fall foul of?

Plan layout in this pic.

In case its not obvious the rear of the washer will be against the top horizontal line. adjacent to the feed/supply as is normal.

One minor problem might be visibility of the meter but this could easily be solved with smart a meter or a smart phone on a selfie stick. (or at a real push move the washer out to read the meter). The washer would not provide any obstruction to the CU.

[T i m]

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Along the camera lines could be the use of a ESP32Cam module, set up as a webcam and then accessed whenever you need to view (live stream) or take a photo of the meter?

The boards have a pretty bright LED to enable you to take a picture (or view video) in otherwise total darkness and they are cheap enough.

It could be stuck onto the back of the WM with some double sided tape and looking at the meter and only needs to be powered (5V, a few mA) when required. Access from a PC or your phone?

It does need a bit of setting up but it's quite easy if you are reasonably PC literate and/or already familiar with such things (like the Arduino Microcontrollers).

I bought mine from Aliexpress for less than a fiver each delivered, including the camera and were very easy to set up following the guides.

Cheers, T i m

p.s. Those boards don't typically come with a uUSB interface (easy for powering with a Poundshop phone charger) but you can buy a tiny uUSB 'breakout board' for a few pence, once you have them setup). You will also need an interface board to program them but again, very cheap and you only need one.

[Scott]

Or what about asking to relocate the meter when your smartmeter is installed?

[T i m]

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Or (in our case) leaving the cupboard_under_the_stairs clear so I can easily read the meter <g>?

For me, an easier solution to not doing that or having to have a smart meter fitted is to read the meters(s) from my chair. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[Scott]

Yes, but is there not an obligation that the meter has to be accessible to any authorised agent of the supply company?

[T i m]

Of course, and it can be, they might just have to wait a bit. ;-)

In my mates shop you had to move a PC table and remove some paneling and no one ever complained?

Cheers, T i m

[Scott]

I think some of the guys that come here with a long list of addresses to get through might well complain.

[Chris B]

Well in the worst case it would only take 10 minutes to move the machine, every bit as quick as removing all of the junk from my parents cupboard.

[Chris B]

sounds interesting I will have a look into it. I have done some temp monitoring with a raspberry Pi so this might be another suitable project.

[Theo]

You could always put it on one of those sets of castors that somebody mentioned in my 'moving appliances' thread.

If you were to get a smart meter there wouldn't be much call to read the meter, since it's phoning home at least monthly anyway.

Theo

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

If there is also a gas meter, be mindful that most need a battery replacement every so often. Brian

[T i m]

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Excellent, well you are already half way there then (if you used the Arduino IDE as you can use that to program the ESP32Cam) and know the sort of things you need to do.

I had my streaming cam up and running pretty quickly and was quite impressed with the picture quality, considering the size and cost of the thing! The illumination LED was pretty bright, similar sort of thing you find on camera phones etc.

And being a d-i-y solution, you have the opportunity to make it do exactly what you want. I did consider automatic character recognition but that would be so easy on my old gas meter. ;-(

There are even cases for them available on the likes of Thingiverse, if you have or know anyone with a 3D printer <wink>.

Cheers, T i m