Kitchen wired from 4mm Radial...

[jeremywalker]

Found a bit of a strange one today...

Looking at making some slight changes to a kitchen layout and found that the cooker supply (32a) had been binned off (Cooker only 13a) and a ring had been wired from this.

Is there a way to actually make that safe? Wiring back to the fuse board would be impossible to make it a ring, and I doubt the customer will want the kitchen ripping apart to upgrade all to a 4mm radial.

I know I could stick a fuse spur on it and rate it down, but that would only give us 13a for a kitchen ring...

Just wondering if anyone had any other suggestions for me?

Cheers

 

[phatboy]

Is it a ring or a radial? You have mentioned both.....

 

[Taylortwocities]

...

 

[jeremywalker]

Sorry phatboy!

Its a radial from the consumer unit, which then goes from a JB under a unit with a ring connected to it.

 

[phatboy]

If it's wired in 2.5mm t+e, it either needs replacing with 4mm to keep it at 32a

Or down-rate it to a 20a, or possibly 25a breaker depending on how the cable is routed.

No FCU's required that way.

 

[jeremywalker]

I doubt very much Ill get away with rewiring it as its all tiled etc.

There isn't THAT much on it as it is a tiny kitchen so could possibly get away with downgrading it to a 20a (25 subject to load and distances)

Its a shame no one makes a fused spur with a 20a 1361 fuse haha.

 

[phatboy]

Why? You would just be adding an extra component that could fail!

Downrating the mcb / rcbo is definitly the best way.

 

[EFLImpudence]

Still a bit unclear and don't know what 'binned off' means but -

Are you saying this is a 'lollipop' circuit?

 

[jeremywalker]

There was originally a cooker feed supplying a cooker, with the kitchen sockets being fed off the down stairs ring main. At some point the occupant decided to change the kitchen and has bought a new cooker rated at 13a (Plugtop). The then electrician has taken the 32a cooker feed and ran it into a junction box and ran a new ring in for 3 sockets bring the cables back to the JB

Yeah I suppose its a lolly pop. What I wondered was wether there was an option to add some form of FCU to downrate the ring from the 4mm radial.

As Phatboy has said, my best option is probably to downgrade the mcb to a 20/25a

 

[EFLImpudence]

If it is definitely a ring from the junction box then I don't think you need to do anything.

Two 4mm² branches would have been better but it is no worse than a 'normal' ring.