Can anyone please help me in regards to putting a single mains socket into a loft. The story so far................ i would like to install a hanging ceiling backet for a LCD tv in the bedroom & running the hidden cables back into the loft. Firstly its seems that there are no mains cables, just lighting cables & a light swich in the loft. Can i run a cable from the loft down the inside of the wall & 'TAP' into the single socket there. would it just be the case of doubling up the wires already in the wall socket.
MAINS SOCKET IN LOFT
- Thread starter MARK NHS
- Start date
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You're lucky - most of the houses I've lived in didn't even have lighting in the loft, let alone power! 
It sounds like you are proposing to add a spur to the upstairs ring - no problem, as long as it really is a ring. It means you have to get three wires into each terminal of the socket you're spurring from (incoming ring, outgoing ring, spur), and some cheap ones don't make that easy, so you may want to consider replacing it with a better one with more room in the terminals, if that's the case.
Just one safety aspect, though: If you run the power cable from the TV up into the loft and plug it in there, how do you disconnect it if there's a problem? It really should have a locally-accessible switch, or be able to be unplugged there. I know it's incredibly rare, but if the thing catches fire, you don't want to have to get a ladder out and climb up into the loft to disconnect it! Better to have the socket in the vicinity of the TV if you can, even if the cable runs up into the loft and back down again to the spur-off point.
Cheers,
Howard
It sounds like you are proposing to add a spur to the upstairs ring - no problem, as long as it really is a ring. It means you have to get three wires into each terminal of the socket you're spurring from (incoming ring, outgoing ring, spur), and some cheap ones don't make that easy, so you may want to consider replacing it with a better one with more room in the terminals, if that's the case.
Just one safety aspect, though: If you run the power cable from the TV up into the loft and plug it in there, how do you disconnect it if there's a problem? It really should have a locally-accessible switch, or be able to be unplugged there. I know it's incredibly rare, but if the thing catches fire, you don't want to have to get a ladder out and climb up into the loft to disconnect it! Better to have the socket in the vicinity of the TV if you can, even if the cable runs up into the loft and back down again to the spur-off point.
Cheers,
Howard
if you are to fit a spur yourself technically it should be a fused spur (without having to notify) so if you make it a swicthed fused spur then job done!
its not just about it catching fire, it could be playing up in another way so you may want to turn it off (before it catches fire!!) i think there is a requirement for kitchen appliences to have accesable switches, dont know if the same applies for everything else but the same logic certainly does!
its not just about it catching fire, it could be playing up in another way so you may want to turn it off (before it catches fire!!) i think there is a requirement for kitchen appliences to have accesable switches, dont know if the same applies for everything else but the same logic certainly does!
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