New RCD needed - probable cost.

Hi,

I am thinking to change my cooker from gas to electric. The house is 45yrs old. I messaged a local electrician asking him for advice and he reckons from what I have said in my messages and the picture I sent him that I might need to do something with an RCD.

As far as I know all the sockets except the cooker socket are on the RCD in the picture. The cooker socket is on the pull-out fuse. The other pull-out fuses are no longer in use. The reason for this is that we had a conservatory built and it as part of that the electrics needed upgraded and the RCD was fitted. But the cooker socket was not in use at the time so maybe they ignored it?

Electrician is local he thinks 6mm wire will be present. I am looking at a ceramic cooker of 6.7KW max (all four rings on at the same time). We don't have an oven so no power requirement there.

What might be required and what might it cost?

David

There is no law to say you must use an RCD, but to follow regulations (they are not law) any new circuit will need RCD protection, and a scheme member electricians sign a contract with their scheme providers to say they will follow regulations, so contract law forces them to comply.

Since a cooker is hard-wired, it does not really need the RCD protection we feel is required for sockets, so it would not really worry me too much for it not to have RCD protection, and I am sure you could find an electrician who will connect up the new cooker. But I can also see why some would refuse.

Electrician has just been. All the sockets are on one RCD. Lights, immersion heater and cooker socket on fuses. He would have been happy to wire up the cooker to the fuse. But because there is a spare unused thingy on the existing RCD box he says he can add an extra RCD to the box and route the cooker socket through it, the additional cost being around £10. Waiting for his quote but I think it will be £80 ish to wire the cooker and add the RCD.

Don’t waste your money on a stand alone RCD - but put the money towards replacing the old CU for one with RCBOs

The extra RCD only adds a tenner or so to the cost of the visit to fit the cooker. The electricians visit to investigate was free. He did mention that the whole thing with the old fuses could be replaced with RCDs but that would cost around £500.