If cables beneath plaster should be protected by an RCD...

[f0rmula]

... how are there ANY cables in a house with solid walls that don't have RCDs? My old house didn't have an RCD protecting the lighting circuits, which I think is relatively usual, but I don't know where the cables would be if they weren't in the walls. (I don't actually know where they went).

In our new place, I don't think there's any other way to get power up into the main house from the cellar (neatly without plastering them into the walls, so it looks like all our circuits will have to be RCD protected. Is that particularly common? I'm not particularly against protecting things with RCDs, I'm just curious. Do people in this situation just use multiple seperate RCDs?

Cheers.

 

[Taylortwocities]

The regulations re concealed wiring (less than 50mm from the surface) changed in 2008 so it did not apply to older installations. Wiring regulations are not retrospective.
New wiring and circuits must comply with the new regs so new circuits have to be protected by a 30mA RCD.

This can be
an RCD inside the consumer unit that protects a number of circuits
an RCD outside the consumer unit that protects just that one specific circuit
or
an RCBO inside the consumer unit that protects an individual circuit.

There are some other variations but those are the most common ones.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

In our new place, I don't think there's any other way to get power up into the main house from the cellar (neatly without plastering them into the walls, so it looks like all our circuits will have to be RCD protected.

Or run in earthed steel conduit.

 

[plugwash]

BTW if you REALLY don't want a particular circuit to be on RCD there are alternatives to RCD protection of concealed cables, they just cost more.

 

[Luckyphil]

In our new place, I don't think there's any other way to get power up into the main house from the cellar (neatly without plastering them into the walls, so it looks like all our circuits will have to be RCD protected.

Or run in earthed steel conduit.

Or surfaced mounted Clipped or in Trunking ?

Lucky

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I was taking it as read that he wants the cables concealed.

 

[Taylortwocities]

In our new place, I don't think there's any other way to get power up into the main house from the cellar (neatly without plastering them into the walls, so it looks like all our circuits will have to be RCD protected.

Unprotected cables must be run in safe zones, even if they are RCD protected.

See //www.diynot.com/wiki/electrics:installation_techniques:walls