Hello all, new blood here.
I work at a small college and down in the basement we have our comms and data cabinet (5 computers, 2 hard drives, a monitor, some phone equipment and several network switches). Currently everything (approximately 14 devices) is running off a mess of daisy-chained extension leads, all leading back to a single 13A plug. The comms cabinet itself has two six-way power blocks, only one of which is in use due to the second one having a 16A plug on it, the other being part of said daisy-chain.
What I was originally planning to do to clear the mess up was wire both the six-way units into their own fused flex outlets (thus eliminating the 16A plug problem) so that all the computers and network equipment were connected through these, and the phone equipment could run off the existing socket and a standard four-way extension lead.
My query relates to how best to do this. It would appear that, since everything works, that the total load on the socket is less than 13A. From my readings of this site and others, you can't strictly speaking run two separate fused spurs from one socket (the original plan above), so would it be better for me to convert the single socket into a 13A fused connection unit and then run a combination of sockets and flex outlets from that? Would the two six-way units still need their own fused flex outlet connections or could they be run from unfused flex outlets? Is there any specific "right" way to connect up wall sockets on the load side of a FCU (ring, star)?
Any help is much appreciated
I work at a small college and down in the basement we have our comms and data cabinet (5 computers, 2 hard drives, a monitor, some phone equipment and several network switches). Currently everything (approximately 14 devices) is running off a mess of daisy-chained extension leads, all leading back to a single 13A plug. The comms cabinet itself has two six-way power blocks, only one of which is in use due to the second one having a 16A plug on it, the other being part of said daisy-chain.
What I was originally planning to do to clear the mess up was wire both the six-way units into their own fused flex outlets (thus eliminating the 16A plug problem) so that all the computers and network equipment were connected through these, and the phone equipment could run off the existing socket and a standard four-way extension lead.
My query relates to how best to do this. It would appear that, since everything works, that the total load on the socket is less than 13A. From my readings of this site and others, you can't strictly speaking run two separate fused spurs from one socket (the original plan above), so would it be better for me to convert the single socket into a 13A fused connection unit and then run a combination of sockets and flex outlets from that? Would the two six-way units still need their own fused flex outlet connections or could they be run from unfused flex outlets? Is there any specific "right" way to connect up wall sockets on the load side of a FCU (ring, star)?
Any help is much appreciated