Hi all, hoping someone can impart some wisdom here....
We moved into our mid-terrace house about 2 years ago now only to find that the electric shower that was fitted did not work. For two reasons.
Firstly, the shower itself was yonks old and completely knackered.
Secondly, I found that the T+E feeding the pull cord switch from the CU had some of it's strands broken (it was the type with 3 or 4 strands per conductor instead of 1 solid core). Where these had broken it had obviously had a drastic effect on the current carrying capability of the cable and overheated, melting the last inch or so of the cable and destroying the switch. After re-tiling and decorating the bathroom I replaced the shower with a modern unit and fitted a new double pole switch. The cable that had overheated was only damaged on the last inch or so and there was a few feet of slack in the loft, so I cut back to remove the damaged section. Shower has been working great ever since with no problems, but the CU is old and there is no earth leakage protection for the shower ciruit, just the MCB. I've read in other posts about a unit with 1 MCB and RCD that can feed shower circuits. Can I just site one of these adjacent to my existing CU and feed the shower from that, and then feed this new unit from the existing way in the CU?
We moved into our mid-terrace house about 2 years ago now only to find that the electric shower that was fitted did not work. For two reasons.
Firstly, the shower itself was yonks old and completely knackered.
Secondly, I found that the T+E feeding the pull cord switch from the CU had some of it's strands broken (it was the type with 3 or 4 strands per conductor instead of 1 solid core). Where these had broken it had obviously had a drastic effect on the current carrying capability of the cable and overheated, melting the last inch or so of the cable and destroying the switch. After re-tiling and decorating the bathroom I replaced the shower with a modern unit and fitted a new double pole switch. The cable that had overheated was only damaged on the last inch or so and there was a few feet of slack in the loft, so I cut back to remove the damaged section. Shower has been working great ever since with no problems, but the CU is old and there is no earth leakage protection for the shower ciruit, just the MCB. I've read in other posts about a unit with 1 MCB and RCD that can feed shower circuits. Can I just site one of these adjacent to my existing CU and feed the shower from that, and then feed this new unit from the existing way in the CU?
