Adding main and lighting circuit for Loft conversion

Hi,
Firstly I am new to this site so treat me gently please!
I am going to do a loft conversion (bedroom) later on in the year but my father in law is coming over soon to wire it for me as he is a qualified electrician (although not UK registered). I wanted to add an extra mains circuit and lighting circuit back to the consumer unit however according to the Building Inspector I would need this to be inpected at a cost of £200. He said that if I took it off the existing first floor circuit I could do it my self and it wouldn't need inspection. So I will end up going the not so safe route just because of the law! My question is my existing house has only one Ring 30 amp fuse and two lighting 5 amp fuses at the consumer unit and I want to add about 8 ceiling down lights and four double plug sockets in the loft. Is this safe to do and will there be any issues with doing this?
Thanks for any help

There is a floor area limit for a ring main. It used to be 1000 square feet but like so many other things it's gone metric. I think it's 100 square metres. That's about 8% bigger so something good came out of the EU!

With only one ring it sounds like yours is either a small house or else the builder was pushing the limits. Add up your floor areas including the proposed loft room and see if it's within limits.

Now for the naughty bit. Do you have any spare fuseways in your consumer unit? Assuming that you are within the area limit I would add the new sockets to the existing ring but with a view to putting them on their own fuse as soon as the inspector has gone! The same goes for the lights.

Of course you cannot responsibly advise someone to break the law, but in practice it may be a reasonably risk free thing to do.

mapj1 said:

Of course you cannot responsibly advise someone to break the law, but in practice it may be a reasonably risk free thing to do.

Click to expand...

another case of: break the law and have a safe installation

go by the law (or at least what he was told - connect as part of existing wiring) and have a potentially dangerous installation.

i know what i would do, it it doesnt involve LABC

I note a lot of 'part P' work arounds are actually worse than if it was not there - these cackky objects for the garden / green house and shed for example;-

http://www.lidl.co.uk/gb/index.nsf/pages/c.o.oow.20050704.p.Garden_Socket_with_Timer_
You can't pretend that in terms of safety its a patch on SWA and a proper outdoor socket, but, it is MUCH cheaper than the proper route, whichhas now at least doubled in cost.
I'm sure they'll sell by the bucketful.