Trying to discover my downstairs ring

Hi,

As some of you might know I'm in the process of laying ballast in my kitchen. When I ripped up the flooring and took out my cupboards I've found loads of crazy wiring.

Whilst it's all out I thought... I'll see if I ca find the ring and make sure it all in the ring and not a whole load of spurs. 5 hours later I've not managedto work it out!!! I can't work out what's going where and how the previously people have wired it!!!! Arrrrggghhhh!!!

Are there gadgets/tools that will identify sockets and where they are connected to/getting their power from? Is there a way to send a signal through the system somehow to out what's going on.

Sorry if I haven't explained this very well but basically how can I work out what's going where without ripping up hard floors to find out what's going on?!

Thanks

If you cannot follow a pair of cables and maybe a FCU a cable tracker will be of no use.

Get someone in, tis the easiest way.

What sorta thing is an FCU and a cable tracker?

The problem is I dont know a decent electrician so I'm worried it could get pretty pricey!! Arrggghhh!!

chriselevate said:

The problem is I dont know a decent electrician so I'm worried it could get pretty pricey!! Arrggghhh!!

Click to expand...

Even a decent electrician can spend a long time mapping out the routes and connections of an installation. If the installation is an accumulation of several years of DIY ( or cowboy ) work then the mapping gets very prolonged.

It might be better and more economical for the long term to bite the bullet and have the kitchen re-wired. Then you know for certain how it is wired and that there are no hiddenn surprises like joints buried in the plaster which would probably not be found.

Thanks for your reply and help.

I agree with your point here about it being an iccumilation of bodging... doesn't surprise me one bit really!!!

I could start again with the ring (and would love to!) but I can't even work out where any part of the ring is in order to get it back onto it. I guess if I simply ring the kitchen I'm simply just putting the kitchen on one big spur if I don't manage to get it on the ring?!

Are there devices that will let me know what's connected where etc or isn't there really anything like that?

Any ideas?

Thanks

Yes.

It's called an 'electrician'

first things to do is work out what is connected to the ring, switch off all the other circuits on your consumer unit, then check each socket, if they are all still live then you have power to each wether its ring or radial.

step 2 unscrew each socket and check 1 or 2 sets of wires chances are some are single these will be radial (or spur)

step 3 to assertain what order the ring goes you would need to remove 1 set of wires in the consumer unit and put them in a temporary terminal block

step 4 remove what you suspect is the 1st switch and again put the wires into seperate blocks, now test with a multimeter you will find 1 set of wires is live and 1 set is dead, check if any of the other sockets are live if not the you have correctly found the first socket, if though there are still sockets live then you have in fact found a middle part of the ring. do each socket in turn until you find the first.

step 5 repeat for each socket until you have socket 1 and 2, then sockets 1,2 & 3 increasing the ring each time you will eventually have all sockets live and power in the disconnected wires in the CU. remember that is most likely to follow a reasonable pattern round the house.

6 if you find 3 sets in any socket then it is most likely that 2 sets are the ring and the 3rd is a spur.

finally having worked out all the sockets connected to the ring reconnect the wires in the CU and switch back on all the other circuits.

be careful to switch off the supply each time you take a socket off, make safe the wires in blocks, switch on, test, switch off again and do the next stage

hope that helps, but remember electrical work in a kitchen that alters the wiring is Notifiable Work under the building regulations Part P. and as such requires a competent person to undertake the work you may find it near impossible to sell your home in the future if you don't have the relevant certiicate for work carried out.

My advice would be to re-wire from the consumer unit. You have no way of telling what lies between the first and last sockets and the the consumer unit unless you can inspect every inch of the cable.

In the cottage I have just bought I have ripped out all the kitchen wiring and found a 30 amp junction box buried in plaster. That would never have been found had I re-used that section of the ring.

After identifying all the sockets that are fed by the MCB you can then map out the socket routing using the voltage drops along the cables when a significant load ( 2 Kw kettle or similar ) is taking current from one of those sockets Plugging it in at various sockets and measuring voltage drops from CU along the neutral to each of the sockets will tell you where current is flowing. It then takes a lot of diagnostic analysis to create the route map of the cable. But even then you will not find hidden nasties.

Measure using a long wander lead. Measuring the voltage live to neutral will not give any useable information as the incoming voltage will be continuously varying far more than the voltage drop.