Power to Garage and Shed

[wazzag]

Hi,

I currently have power to my garage which is just a direct connection to the main fuse box in the house. In the garage there's a simple junction box with a spur for the lights and a spur for the a few plug sockets. This doesn't sound correct/safe to me. Should I replace the current setup with a mini/small consumer unit in the garage with the lights and plugs on different breakers?
I also have a shed 80ft up the garden I would like to feed power to which I'm guessing could be a third output from the new unit?

Although i'm pretty confident about electrics i know nothing about regs so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Warren

 

[breezer]

Search

 

[rebuke]

Depending on what cable is being used and what breaker is in the main consumer unit, simply splitting the cable *might* be OK. Is the light switch just a switch, or is it a fused spur?

Also, you mention the supply goes back to your fuse board, is that a fuse board or a modern consumer unit, and is the supply to the garage covered by an RCD (it should be, since it is very likely that things like lawnmowers etc will be plugged in in a garage)?

As for running power to the shed, because that will involve running a cable outside, that is notifiable work under part P, so you either have to get a part P approved sparky in who can self certify his work, or notify your local council's building control before doing the work, and they will then come and inspect it afterwards. If you do run a cable to the shed (or install a consumer unit in the garage) then to comply with the wiring regs you will have to make sure it's RCD'd.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a qualified electrician, but I do have some degree of familiarity with this area - as I'm in the process of doing a similar thing myself...)

 

[wazzag]

Depending on what cable is being used and what breaker is in the main consumer unit, simply splitting the cable *might* be OK. Is the light switch just a switch, or is it a fused spur?

Also, you mention the supply goes back to your fuse board, is that a fuse board or a modern consumer unit, and is the supply to the garage covered by an RCD (it should be, since it is very likely that things like lawnmowers etc will be plugged in in a garage)?

As for running power to the shed, because that will involve running a cable outside, that is notifiable work under part P, so you either have to get a part P approved sparky in who can self certify his work, or notify your local council's building control before doing the work, and they will then come and inspect it afterwards. If you do run a cable to the shed (or install a consumer unit in the garage) then to comply with the wiring regs you will have to make sure it's RCD'd.

(Disclaimer: I'm not a qualified electrician, but I do have some degree of familiarity with this area - as I'm in the process of doing a similar thing myself...)

Thanks for your help rebuke, the light is currently on a fused spur and the main fuse board is an old board with big old fuses - there are no RCDs anywhere.
Maybe I should change the main fuse board for a new consumer unit and run the garage lights and power off of that directly (and shed in the future - sounds like a lot of hassle to get that sorted in the short term)?

 

[rebuke]

Running lights off a fused spur is absolutely fine, however as I say the garage should probably be RCD'd (a quick short term solution could be to replace the socket faces with ones with RCDs built in).

Replacing fuse boards with consumer units is normally a good idea, but can be quite expensive (and if you do it yourself is again notifiable under part P, so needs building control etc). Also, the 17th edition of the wiring regs introduced some quite strict restrictions on what needs RCDing (in most houses it ends up being everything!), and also that it should be set up so that an RCD tripping won't take out too many other circuits - the solution is generally either to use RCBOs (a circuit breaker with an RCD built in) for everything (which is expensive), or get a dual split load board, where you have two RCDs so can split things around.

In your situation I would probably replace the fuse board, run a single supply out to the garage from an RCBO to a consumer unit in the garage, run a supply from that for the lights, a supply for power, and a supply to the shed, but obviously without seeing the layout etc or knowing your ability I can't say for sure - the simple solution I suggested for your garage with RCD socket fronts might be best in the short term (as replacing consumer units can be time consuming)...