Hopefully I can explain this properly...
I bought a house that was owned by an electrician.
My dad was an electrician who was very hands on in teaching me about wiring stuff up. I also know that the worst house you can buy is one an electrician used to own.
I know enough about electrics to know I don't know enough about electrics. I think twice about rewiring a plug Please bare that statement in mind when reading this as my questions relate to making sure the installation I have is safe and what I need to get an electrician to do to make it safe and my terminology is undoubtedly going to be wrong!
My house was a bungalow when I bought it 4 years ago. 3 years ago I had an upstairs put on it. This involved a new consumer unit and rewiring of the downstairs lights. Downstairs, the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom was knocked through in to a kitchen, these are the only sockets that were rewired.
The builder went bankrupt before the downstairs was done. The electrician he had used died of a heart attack.
I had a new builder and a new electrician do the down stairs.
I'm still not signed off on part P and desperately need an electrician that will do this but can't find one (that should probably be a post of its own!)
There is a very very large shed in the garden that the previous owner (the electrician) had wired up. 3 flood lights, 4 strip lights and about 10 double sockets, all look a bit shoddy. There is a very meaty looking SWA running from the house and I know this is burried properly. I also did some calcs last year and am sure it's over specified for the distance (~30m).
Someone mentioned to me it should have its own earthing rod because of the distance from the house. There isn't one. So i thought I'd do some reading... which lead me to write this.
The SWA ran into what I can only describe as what passed as a consumer unit in the 1940s with fuse wire.
The electrician that passed away told me it wasn't safe and had changed over to a small consumer unit with a 32A RCD.
The lights run from a 6amp fuse and the sockets from a 16amp.
Having done a bit of reading I thought I would follow the SWA to the house and discovered it appears to be connected to a plug socket that in itself is a spur off the house ring main.
I read something that said using a small consumer unit with RCD in a shed off a spur would make it less safe than it just running as a spur from the house.
So... Have I provided enough information to say whether this is safe as is? If not what do you need to know?
If it's not safe what do I need to ask an electrician for? I've had a lot of bad luck with electricians over the past 4 years so want to be confident of what I want them to do before instructing someone.
Many thanks.
I bought a house that was owned by an electrician.
My dad was an electrician who was very hands on in teaching me about wiring stuff up. I also know that the worst house you can buy is one an electrician used to own.
I know enough about electrics to know I don't know enough about electrics. I think twice about rewiring a plug Please bare that statement in mind when reading this as my questions relate to making sure the installation I have is safe and what I need to get an electrician to do to make it safe and my terminology is undoubtedly going to be wrong!
My house was a bungalow when I bought it 4 years ago. 3 years ago I had an upstairs put on it. This involved a new consumer unit and rewiring of the downstairs lights. Downstairs, the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom was knocked through in to a kitchen, these are the only sockets that were rewired.
The builder went bankrupt before the downstairs was done. The electrician he had used died of a heart attack.
I had a new builder and a new electrician do the down stairs.
I'm still not signed off on part P and desperately need an electrician that will do this but can't find one (that should probably be a post of its own!)
There is a very very large shed in the garden that the previous owner (the electrician) had wired up. 3 flood lights, 4 strip lights and about 10 double sockets, all look a bit shoddy. There is a very meaty looking SWA running from the house and I know this is burried properly. I also did some calcs last year and am sure it's over specified for the distance (~30m).
Someone mentioned to me it should have its own earthing rod because of the distance from the house. There isn't one. So i thought I'd do some reading... which lead me to write this.
The SWA ran into what I can only describe as what passed as a consumer unit in the 1940s with fuse wire.
The electrician that passed away told me it wasn't safe and had changed over to a small consumer unit with a 32A RCD.
The lights run from a 6amp fuse and the sockets from a 16amp.
Having done a bit of reading I thought I would follow the SWA to the house and discovered it appears to be connected to a plug socket that in itself is a spur off the house ring main.
I read something that said using a small consumer unit with RCD in a shed off a spur would make it less safe than it just running as a spur from the house.
So... Have I provided enough information to say whether this is safe as is? If not what do you need to know?
If it's not safe what do I need to ask an electrician for? I've had a lot of bad luck with electricians over the past 4 years so want to be confident of what I want them to do before instructing someone.
Many thanks.