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Hi all,
Am decorating the baby's room. All being replastered so wanted to increase the number of sockets.
There is currenty only 1 double socket, attached to the original house ring main. It is located at skirting height (i.e sitting directly above the skirting board). It is also surface mounted. I wanted to recess and locate at the normal 12" sort of height in the room.
There are 3 cables going into this socket, 1x ring in, 1x ring out and 1x spur which runs downstairs and powers a double socket in the living room. None of the cables are long enough to reach 12" higher.
Additionally, within the room there was a fused spur connection for a storage heater. The economy 7 has now gone and I had the economy 7 CU connected to the meter so I have 2 standard CU's.
The majority of the circuits of the old E7 CU are radials, except for the circuit that powered the bedroom heaters, which appears to be a ring. There is a 16A MCB in the CU powering this ring.
I could potentially extend the old storage heater ring, rather than extending the normal house ring. This would give me a second ring that I could add plugs to upstairs as I decorate each bedroom.
However, the cables from this ring are also not long enough to reach another 12" up the wall (the fused spurs for heaters were also at skirting level and surface mounted).
I was originally thinking to extend with crimps, but there seems to be quite a difference of opinion on the forum recently regarding crimping.
If using the heater ring to extend, I would need to join the existing ring cables which were in the original socket. Bear in mind that this includes a spur off to a downstairs plug. Is this ok? (I think probably not).
A new ring would be ok at each socket until I had to join back to the original cables. Potentially I could have a recessed box with connector blocks inside and a blanking plate over? This would enable access.
If using the new ring I would replace the 16A MCB with a 32A, yes?
As you can see I have options and want to make the right decision.
A couple of pictures so you can see what I need to do:
1. Picture of existing socket (with spur off to downstairs)
2. Picture of heater fused spur (on 16A ring off E7 CU which is now a normal CU)
Many thanks
Am decorating the baby's room. All being replastered so wanted to increase the number of sockets.
There is currenty only 1 double socket, attached to the original house ring main. It is located at skirting height (i.e sitting directly above the skirting board). It is also surface mounted. I wanted to recess and locate at the normal 12" sort of height in the room.
There are 3 cables going into this socket, 1x ring in, 1x ring out and 1x spur which runs downstairs and powers a double socket in the living room. None of the cables are long enough to reach 12" higher.
Additionally, within the room there was a fused spur connection for a storage heater. The economy 7 has now gone and I had the economy 7 CU connected to the meter so I have 2 standard CU's.
The majority of the circuits of the old E7 CU are radials, except for the circuit that powered the bedroom heaters, which appears to be a ring. There is a 16A MCB in the CU powering this ring.
I could potentially extend the old storage heater ring, rather than extending the normal house ring. This would give me a second ring that I could add plugs to upstairs as I decorate each bedroom.
However, the cables from this ring are also not long enough to reach another 12" up the wall (the fused spurs for heaters were also at skirting level and surface mounted).
I was originally thinking to extend with crimps, but there seems to be quite a difference of opinion on the forum recently regarding crimping.
If using the heater ring to extend, I would need to join the existing ring cables which were in the original socket. Bear in mind that this includes a spur off to a downstairs plug. Is this ok? (I think probably not).
A new ring would be ok at each socket until I had to join back to the original cables. Potentially I could have a recessed box with connector blocks inside and a blanking plate over? This would enable access.
If using the new ring I would replace the 16A MCB with a 32A, yes?
As you can see I have options and want to make the right decision.
A couple of pictures so you can see what I need to do:
1. Picture of existing socket (with spur off to downstairs)
2. Picture of heater fused spur (on 16A ring off E7 CU which is now a normal CU)
Many thanks