Kitchen electrics

[larco]

Hi,

We are planning to have our kitchen refurbished.

The whole house was rewired four years ago.
Kitchen is now on its own ring main.

If we need additional electrics work done to the kitchen ie. moving a socket or installing a new fused spur for a washing machine can anyone tell me what is the procedure an electrician should follow.

1) Does he need to open existing CU?

2) Is everything checked?

3) if the regs have changed since 2007 does he need to carry out other work?

The reason I am asking is because I want to make sure no additional works is sold to me unnecessarily by the builders I will be getting to wuote for the whole refurb.

many thanks

 

[sparkwright]

Hi,

We are planning to have our kitchen refurbished.

The whole house was rewired four years ago.
Kitchen is now on its own ring main.

If we need additional electrics work done to the kitchen ie. moving a socket or installing a new fused spur for a washing machine can anyone tell me what is the procedure an electrician should follow.

1) Does he need to open existing CU?

2) Is everything checked?

3) if the regs have changed since 2007 does he need to carry out other work?

The reason I am asking is because I want to make sure no additional works is sold to me unnecessarily by the builders I will be getting to wuote for the whole refurb.

many thanks

He may look inside the cu before starting to check for RCDs and that everything looks ok. He will possibly check here to see if the water, gas etc is bonded. He also may want to carry out tests from the cu.

What's wrong with looking at the cu?

He should check everything he needs to and even things he doesn't have to if he thinks it necessary.

He will want to make sure all work he does is in line with current regs. He may not be too concerned with correcting things that aren't related to his part of the job, though may make recommendations.

If you are worried you must ask him exactly what he intends to do, but you must also be prepared for any additional work, as once he has started he may find some defects that need putting right.

You never can tell.

 

[SimonH2]

The reason I am asking is because I want to make sure no additional works is sold to me unnecessarily by the builders I will be getting to wuote for the whole refurb.

Very wise, some trades are quite happy to make some easy extra money on the extras. A colleague had someone in to quote for a new bathroom, they effectively told him (as it was recounted to me) that "he must have a new consumer unit fitted" ... "and that'll be £500 please". He asked me if £500 was reasonable for a new CU, the people quoting for the bathroom now won't be getting considered for any work from him.

Things to be aware of. Any work the electrician does will need to meet current regs. Since most installations have unprotected wiring buried to less than 50mm, that means (effectively) that anything the electrian works on (adding or moving cables) will need to be RCD protected. A new CU 4 years ago "probably" (can't recall when the latest regs came into force) had an RCD protecting some, but not all, of the installation - and so you may well be advised to upgrade. If you have a split board, then the circuits would need to be on the protected side - but this may mean a lot goes off if you trip the RCD.
For most boards it's possible to fit an RCBO (a combined RCD and MCB) to an unprotected way and so add a circuit that has RCD protection separate to the rest of the RCD protected loads. It quickly gets expensive to do a whole board, but it's a good way if you don't need many extra circuits.

In the kitchen, it most likely that the work will be notifiable, so you need to use an electrician who is a member of one of the schemes (NICEIC, NAPIT, forget the others) and can self certify. Certifying via the member scheme costs a few quid, certifying via LABC may cost hundreds.

 

[PrenticeBoyofDerry]

The Regulation changed in 2008 and have recently been amended, the new amendments can be used now or on and after January 1st 2012.
Oh course the electrician will look at your CU it's first place they should be looking.
As previous posts, the things the electrician will look for is:
RCD protection
Earthing conductor
Main bonding conductors
They should also run tests on the kitchen circuit for faults and make account for an extra load.