Electric Showers

[IanWilson]

I have been told by an electrician doing an electric survey of our house that I am not allowed to have two electric showers connected on single phase.

Both showers fully comply in all other respects - separate supply run in adequate cable back to the main consumer until and protected by appropriate MCBs.

I have searched the regs for confirmation - no luck.

Can anyone confirm or deny this?

And do the same restrictions apply to the likes of cookers, washers and other high load appliances?

Thanks

Ian Wilson

 

[BJS_Spark]

Electric showers use their full load all the time they are operated and thus diversity can not be applied to them directly as with some other high load appliances. However diversity can be applied to the installation as a whole at the consumer unit and it will depend on what appliances you run together.
If they are operated together that could be an issue but if they were connected in such a way that this could not happen ie. a contactor interlock then connecting both is not an issue.
What is the rating of your supplier cutout and what is the size of your tails?

 

[Adam_151]

I don't take the regs on diversity as gospel, but some common sense needs to be applied to see if the service fuse would be regularly overloaded in normal use, this should be avoided, for example if you had a 60A supply, and wanted two 9.5kw showers, then that would be a no -no in my book, but if you wanted to put two 8.5kw showers on a 100A service, and there was very little other load, gas used for cooking and heating etc, then I can't see a problem