Hi,
The house we moved into about a month ago has two shower pumps in the loft – a 2 bar one for the ensuite and a 1.5 bar one for the main bathroom. They get their electrical supply via a standard double 13amp socket in the loft.
I had assumed that this 13amp double socket was spurred off the upstairs ring main and hence protected by both an MCB and the RCD that are part of the main consumer unit.
However, I wasn’t 100% sure of this, partly because our house has two separate consumer units. Yesterday, I decided to check out exactly how the whole place was wired up in terms of these two consumer units.
Here’s what we’ve got. We have a modern consumer unit in the garage which has 10 MCBs, all protected by an RCD. One of the 10 circuits on this consumer unit is the upstairs ring main. It also has circuits for the lights in all of the house except one room, the cooker, the central heating, and about half of the downstairs sockets.
Next to that is an old grey isolator switch box with a single 60A cartridge fuse. This stays live regardless of the state of the master switch on the aforementioned consumer unit.
What this isolator does is supply a feed to a second consumer unit in the utility room. This second unit is one of the old style ones with cartridge fuses. It supplies the lights in the utility room, and the remaining downstairs sockets (the ones that aren’t fed via the consumer unit in the garage).
It turns out that the socket in the loft for the shower pumps is not on the upstairs ring circuit that is supplied from the modern consumer unit after all. Instead, it is on the same circuit as the immersion heater, which is a 15A (cartridge) fused circuit on the old style consumer unit in the utility room. So, in a nutshell, the shower pump supply has no MCB and no RCD.
All of the (visible) pipework for the showers is earth bonded as far as I can see.
Questions then are as follows:
1. Is it advisable and/or a requirement for the shower pump to be protected by an MCB and/or an RCD?
2. if an MCB is required, can I use some kind of simple plug in replacement for the existing cartridge fuse
3. If an RCD is required, is it acceptable simply to replace the existing 13amp outlet in the loft with one of these instead: http://www.screwfix.com/prods/57865/Electrical/RCDs/Volex-2G-DP-RCD-Skt
Is there anything else about what I have described above that rings alarm bells?
Thanks in advance,
Dave.
The house we moved into about a month ago has two shower pumps in the loft – a 2 bar one for the ensuite and a 1.5 bar one for the main bathroom. They get their electrical supply via a standard double 13amp socket in the loft.
I had assumed that this 13amp double socket was spurred off the upstairs ring main and hence protected by both an MCB and the RCD that are part of the main consumer unit.
However, I wasn’t 100% sure of this, partly because our house has two separate consumer units. Yesterday, I decided to check out exactly how the whole place was wired up in terms of these two consumer units.
Here’s what we’ve got. We have a modern consumer unit in the garage which has 10 MCBs, all protected by an RCD. One of the 10 circuits on this consumer unit is the upstairs ring main. It also has circuits for the lights in all of the house except one room, the cooker, the central heating, and about half of the downstairs sockets.
Next to that is an old grey isolator switch box with a single 60A cartridge fuse. This stays live regardless of the state of the master switch on the aforementioned consumer unit.
What this isolator does is supply a feed to a second consumer unit in the utility room. This second unit is one of the old style ones with cartridge fuses. It supplies the lights in the utility room, and the remaining downstairs sockets (the ones that aren’t fed via the consumer unit in the garage).
It turns out that the socket in the loft for the shower pumps is not on the upstairs ring circuit that is supplied from the modern consumer unit after all. Instead, it is on the same circuit as the immersion heater, which is a 15A (cartridge) fused circuit on the old style consumer unit in the utility room. So, in a nutshell, the shower pump supply has no MCB and no RCD.
All of the (visible) pipework for the showers is earth bonded as far as I can see.
Questions then are as follows:
1. Is it advisable and/or a requirement for the shower pump to be protected by an MCB and/or an RCD?
2. if an MCB is required, can I use some kind of simple plug in replacement for the existing cartridge fuse
3. If an RCD is required, is it acceptable simply to replace the existing 13amp outlet in the loft with one of these instead: http://www.screwfix.com/prods/57865/Electrical/RCDs/Volex-2G-DP-RCD-Skt
Is there anything else about what I have described above that rings alarm bells?
Thanks in advance,
Dave.