I am sorry if I'm asking faqs. I can't find anything on the faq pages or Google groups. Has there been some rule against ceiling switches in bathrooms? Does being a wet room make a difference? And is there a minimum ceiling height? I am thinking about light switches and a shower isolating switch.
Thanks for any help.
Not that I am aware of...
maybe.. but water falls down..and pull switches have insulated pulls..
not that I am aware of
put isolation for ALL electrics OUTSIDE the bathroom. Make it a switched spur for everything inside. IIRC a 45A DP switch is about the grade for a leccy shower as well as light/fan and shaver socket etc.
Thanks for the reassurance.
This is an old stone house with all surface wiring (plaster non-flat over irregular slate fragments), and if the isolating switch isn't in the bathroom then it is in a living room. They do cord-operated 2 pole switches to 50A and it is a neat solution if permissible. I think it reasonable to run everything else off a non-isolated lighting circuit, though I am in two minds about the 300W sanivite pump below floor level.
that might be a question for the BCO then. I had assumed an actual heated shower. 300W of pump is no big deal.
Tricky problem really - adding electricity to slate built house..
Pull switches need to be sited outside zone 2 generally, and should not be reachable by someone standing in the bath or shower.
Some, see the comments about reach of the shower head for defining the limits of the zones discussed in the article above.
Many ceilings are not high enough to clear the end of zone 2 - but its not usually a problem unless the room is very small.
isolating switch.
Wet rooms are useless s**te, possibly the stupidest idea ever.
I'd have thought that as far as the ceiling is concerned, a wet room would be little different to a shower room, or even a bathroom with a shower. It might be best to fit ceiling switches as far away as possible from shower heads. A minimum ceiling height is probably irrelevant if the switch itself is operated by a cord. I'd try to avoid having a sole source of lighting on the same sub-circuit as a shower pump (or even an electric shower!) in case of trips which might plunge you into total darkness, stark naked and soaking wet :-)
Does this imply the wet room opens onto a living room? You may have problems with steam going into the living room.
Andy
This is very worrying. The whole room, including all the ceiling, is going to be in zone 1 from its size. That appears to mean no mains voltage equipment and no ceiling switches! The shower pump (a drain pump to raise the outflow half a meter or so - not a 'shower' pump) and its electrical outlet (to flex) is going to be in zone 0, and will presumably have to be in a locked enclosure? Is that good enough? And the lights and fan will have to be SELV. This raises problems over where to put the transformer. Is above a ceiling outside the room?
Shower equipment such as drain pumps are usually designed for the circumstance and are SELV etc. SELV lighting with IP 65 sounds like a good plan if the room is that small. Use a small transformer per light, and you can push it through the hole the light needs. Things that are in spaces beneath baths and trays etc are outside of the zones if you need a tool to access them.
On Monday 15 April 2013 10:27 Percy Picacity wrote in uk.d-i-y:
Zone 2 starts 2.25m above the base of the bath/shower and 60cm away sideways from zone 1.
Do you have a low ceiling?
If you need horizontal distances for zone 2 in a wet room - I cannot remember but can look them up, but IIRC it's based on a radius from the drain.
Isolators would be best set outside.
If you get really stuck, SELV switches would be a possible solution
Yes.. the last one I did had a 24V pump for the shower operated by a flow switch in the shower output, the transformer had an overrun timer and a extra empty what's left after 5 minutes. Much easier than trying to fit a float switch in the drain.
It was a kit designed for the purpose. It could be a bit noisy when sucking air but the user was deaf so it didn't matter.
(There was an upgrade where the flow switch was replaced by a flow measure and the pump was modulated to avoid sucking air but it wasn't worth it.)
The lights were 12V down lighters with a transformer shoved up through the holes.
The switches were all on the outside.
If you've got shower water going up through the ceiling into electrics above it, you've got serious problems....
(We had a shower with a drain pump at somewhere I used to work. It was outside the shower room. In fact it was somewhere that it leaked for weeks before anyone noticed. And it leaked more than once, though we checked it more often after the first time. But obviously there are installations where you don't have much choice.)
Or a child playing at being a fireman with the shower hose!
I fitted a SELV fan by a posh make a few years back which had an old-fashioned 50Hz copper/steel transformer which was about 15cm sided cube and weighed several kilograms. Do the fan and shower pumps come with little switch mode 'transformers' nowadays?
sorry if it wrapsaround:-)
Above a ceiling is fine - and as per you other post - yes the fan transformers ae still bricks:-(
fit an IP rated mains fan? allowed in shower cubicle (whatever zone that is)
e.g. Quietair QT100
Jim K
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