Hi all,
I was reading this thread //www.diynot.com/diy/threads/chased-wires-in-kitchen-wall-does-this-look-right.431821/ recently which got me thinking about a kitchen in a house I'm renovating.
I am doing a fairly straightforward like-for-like replacement of the kitchen units and appliances to smarten it up a bit. I don't want to change the layout much and so had no intentions of getting an electrician in, because the kitchen was re-wired maybe 10 years ago when the last kitchen was installed.
Which is why I was a bit gutted when I ripped out the existing kitchen to discover what, to me, looked like fairly strange wiring. There are three sockets and 3 FCUs in a line above the worktop, spread out over about 3m. I had assumed that there would be cables running horizontally between these, but this is not the case. Instead, the cables run vertically. E.g. a cable runs vertically down from one socket, and then horizontally behind the kitchen cabinets (maybe 30cm below the worktop level), and then vertically up to the next socket. The cables are chased in to the wall above the level of the worktop, but are simply surface-mounted to the wall below the level of the worktop (in mini trunking in some cases; with clips in others).
What concerned me was the way the cables run horizontally behind the kitchen units. Unless I am mistaken, these cables are not in a safe zone. I understand that this only matters if the cables are concealed in walls and my horizontal runs are clearly visible when the kitchen units are removed, but does the fact that I'm going to put new kitchen cabinets in front of these cables not mean that they are effectively concealed and so the rules on safe zones should apply? It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone will one day drill a hole in the back of one of the cabinets, and they will have no idea that there is a cable running horizontally behind them. I therefore assumed that I'd have to go to the expense and disruption of having an electrician come in and fix it.
However, having read the thread I've linked above, it seems that nobody was concerned that whilst the cables in that post were clearly visible in the photo, they would be covered up by the sink unit when it was installed and so become (to my mind, at least) concealed again. Am I worrying about nothing? Is the way that my kitchen has been wired OK after all, as the only cables not in safe zones are surface-mounted behind kitchen cabinets?
Thanks!
I was reading this thread //www.diynot.com/diy/threads/chased-wires-in-kitchen-wall-does-this-look-right.431821/ recently which got me thinking about a kitchen in a house I'm renovating.
I am doing a fairly straightforward like-for-like replacement of the kitchen units and appliances to smarten it up a bit. I don't want to change the layout much and so had no intentions of getting an electrician in, because the kitchen was re-wired maybe 10 years ago when the last kitchen was installed.
Which is why I was a bit gutted when I ripped out the existing kitchen to discover what, to me, looked like fairly strange wiring. There are three sockets and 3 FCUs in a line above the worktop, spread out over about 3m. I had assumed that there would be cables running horizontally between these, but this is not the case. Instead, the cables run vertically. E.g. a cable runs vertically down from one socket, and then horizontally behind the kitchen cabinets (maybe 30cm below the worktop level), and then vertically up to the next socket. The cables are chased in to the wall above the level of the worktop, but are simply surface-mounted to the wall below the level of the worktop (in mini trunking in some cases; with clips in others).
What concerned me was the way the cables run horizontally behind the kitchen units. Unless I am mistaken, these cables are not in a safe zone. I understand that this only matters if the cables are concealed in walls and my horizontal runs are clearly visible when the kitchen units are removed, but does the fact that I'm going to put new kitchen cabinets in front of these cables not mean that they are effectively concealed and so the rules on safe zones should apply? It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone will one day drill a hole in the back of one of the cabinets, and they will have no idea that there is a cable running horizontally behind them. I therefore assumed that I'd have to go to the expense and disruption of having an electrician come in and fix it.
However, having read the thread I've linked above, it seems that nobody was concerned that whilst the cables in that post were clearly visible in the photo, they would be covered up by the sink unit when it was installed and so become (to my mind, at least) concealed again. Am I worrying about nothing? Is the way that my kitchen has been wired OK after all, as the only cables not in safe zones are surface-mounted behind kitchen cabinets?
Thanks!
