Workshop advice needed

[rich9]

Hoping someone can offer some advice for me, I'm converting my back yard into a workshop (mostly woodwork). and I'm not 100% about how to do the electrics. To give an idea of how things are at this time, I have oil heating for the house and there is an existing double socket outside which currently feeds the oil burner. I believe this is spured off the back of an internal double socket and part of the main socket circuit for the house. The sockets are all one one circuit and my fuse box is of the older style using ceramic and wire fuses rather than trip switches.

All of the equipment I plan to use in the workshop will be 240v and the most hungry being the tablesaw. Apart from a strip light, battery chargers and perhaps a radio, there will never be more than one appliance running at any one time.

So my question is, am I safe to simply take a new spur off the external socket already in place or will I have to run a whole new cable back to the fuse box? If a new cable is needed will I have to overhaul the entire system as I can't see anyway to tie it into the existing system.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

You really should get an electrician.

It would be both desirable, and feasible, to have the workshop separated from your house installation - basically you need the guy to split a second set of tails off after the meter, into an isolator, then a cable from there to a consumer unit in the workshop with an RCBO(s) for sockets, separate circuit for the lights so you aren't left in darkness holding a spinningslicingchopping machine if the sockets trip, don't have to schlep back to the house to reset anything etc.

You might as well have a fat cable put in, as the difference it will make overall will be trivial, then you'll be future proofed for running that big saw/planer-thicknesser/spindle moulder you pick up cheap on eBay...

Your strip lights really should be high frequency ones, and emergency backup on them would be a good idea.

 

[big-all]

have you got a big front garden ?? you are only allowed to cover half the garden area the size when the house was built or before 1947

in other words if your garden plot is 150sqm and the house is 50sqm your garden is 100sqm so half this is your permitted so 50sqm minus any building sheds decking etc added on

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Assuming the rules are the same in NI.