Cooker hood wiring

[norton]

Please help.
I am installing a new integrated cooker hood extractor fan and am unsure of where to take the power from.

The worktop level cooker power switch is in exactly the right place and has a plug socket with it as well. I've checked behind the switch and there is only one cable. There is no separate cable supplying power to the plug socket.

Is it ok to take the power for the fan from the cooker power switch and socket, as long as it goes through a fused connection unit?

[ban-all-sheds]

Do you ever use the socket on the cooker control unit for anything else?

If not, why not just plug the hood in - job done.

[norton]

ban-all-sheds wrote:

Do you ever use the socket on the cooker control unit for anything else? If not, why not just plug the hood in - job done.

I use the socket occasionally but I was more worried about over loading the circuit. If I moved house and the next person was a bit of an idiot and plugged in all sorts of stuff to the socket, as well as having the hood, oven and hob wired in and all turned on at the same time, it might be a problem.

Would replacing the control unit face, with one without a socket, be a safer option?

[ban-all-sheds]

Well - if you're happy to lose the socket as an option, then clearly you don't really need it for anything else, so you might as well leave it and use it to power the hood via a plug, no?

Cooker circuits are supposed to be designed with the socket in mind, if there is one, and no circuit in your house, be it cooker, lights, ring mains etc should be installed with a circuit breaker or fuse that is too big for the cable, so overloading, if it happens, should result in the MCB tripping rather than the cable melting.

IF you start adding to a circuit, it is possible to exceed the current for which it was designed, although as I said, this should never be dangerous. If you didn't have a hood, then presumably you wouldn't be worrying about the presence of the socket, any more than you would worry whether any of the other circuits in your house were properly designed.

In theory you should not spur another item from the cooker circuit - in practice you might well be able to do it in perfect safety and without causing the MCB to trip or the fuse to blow - it depends on what the rating of the cooker is, and the hood, and the size of the cable and the value of the MCB or fuse. So you could work all that out, and decide that yes, adding another 3A, or whatever, for the hood will not cause problems, or you could just plug it in to the socket, which is there so that you can plug things in. The design guidelines for cooker circuits allow 5A for the socket, which I'm sure would be more than enough for the hood.

[norton]

Thanks for the advice.

I think it's going to be a lot easier and a lot less messy, as you said, to just fit a plug.

Cheers.