removing a socket on a ring main

[Thermo]

Whats the best recomended method for removing a socket which is no longer wanted and covering it up. Obviously the wiring needs to remain intact to keep the ring circuit, but i cant use a blanking plate as i dont want it to show and it will be covered up by plaster.

many thanks

Thermo

 

[Damocles]

Remove it back to somewhere under the floor or in the ceiling (as the case may be). You are only allowed to bury crimped or soldered connections, but you are not allowed to bury unprotected cables except in 'safe zones', which generally means horizontal or vertical lines directly to fittings. So if you remove the plate, there is no fitting any longer and most likely you can't leave the wires there either.

So use a junction box under the floor. And a dozen people here will tell you how they don't like junction boxes either. If you take up a floorboard, try to cut it so it is easy to access the junction just by unscrewing a short length of board.

 

[Thermo]

thats how i would normally do it, but sods law says its a concrete floor and a newly plastered ceiling, with the cables in the cavity of the wall! (a dogs breakfast in other words, not done by me i may add!)

 

[Thermo]

so in short it cant move up down left or right!

 

[Damocles]

Depends how desperate you are getting. If you care to hack the wall to bits to add protection then you can move the cables.

Or you might like to consider adding a tasteful but oddly positioned picture?

Where do the cables in the cavity come from? Is there no way of getting back to the previous socket and pulling a new cable though to the next one?

Leaving aside the issue of not having cables in cavities either, of course. Though this is more a building regs-damp penetration, rather than electrical issue.

This is beginning to sound like just the sort of can of worms which might in the past be solved by squeezing the regs a bit somewhere, but which under part P might call for a complete house rewire.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Sounds like, in short, you can't remove it.

 

[Thermo]

pretty much no way of going back to the previos socket, but the wall can be hacked abit. Can a metal plated box not be used if the wires are correctly crimped?

 

[Damocles]

Well,,, Given that the cabling is mechanically protected in front and entering from the cavity behind, and the connections are a method approved for burying, then so far so good.

That would just leave the issue of cables running in cavity. Which sounds like it might be a problem elsewhere too. Given that this is a damp penetration issue, and that you have not changed anything by your work, then electrically it sounds ok. If you are asking how strictly part P might be enforced to require additional remedial work on existing installations, I havn't a clue.

 

[Thermo]

thanks damocles. i thought that would be the case, nice to have it confirmed. as for the cables in the cavity, from what i can see the whole house is like it! (still its not mine so thats a relief!)

Cheers

thermo

 

[kai]

For others in a similar situation, if upstairs etc, why not pull back the cables into the loft, and fit a MK metal clad socket etc in the loft..., and join the wires there, that way you have a socket in the loft, and solved the wires joint problems at one hit!

 

[Thermo]

certainly agree but its a no go in this situation!

 

[2scoops0406]

Thermo, asked the very same question myself a few months back. The link below gives the replies, should confirm what you have already been told.

//www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13125&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0