Connecting light radial circuit using circuit to boiler

[sparkzilla]

Hi everyone

I have a house that was rewired about 30 years ago. All the light in the house run from the same ring (except the kitchen). There is a wooden junction box under the upstairs floor boards that all the lights are powered from and this gets quite warm at times.

Recently i had a new kitchen installed and a electrician rewired the kitchen along with a new fuse box. I was surprised when he wired my Combi-Boiler up to its own fuse switch. There is nothing but the boiler connected and i thought this was a bit of an overkill.

As I want to upgrade my upstairs light to mains powered spot lights (about three or four per room, in three bedrooms and landing but i wont be touching the bathroom), can i run my upstairs lights off the boiler circuit and effectively put my lights on a seperate radial circuit?

This would leave me with a seperate upstairs lighting circuit but with a combi boiler also connected. This would reduce the load on the existing lighting circuit and hopefully cool the wooden junction box a bit.

See photo for the existing fuse box, the boiler is connected to the red, non RCD section.

 

[Spark123]

Not really, if your lighting circuit goes wrong and causes the MCB to trip then you'll lose your heating.
The sound of a single wooden box getting warm makes me think you should be discussing this with an electrician on site, surely your lights are not on a 32A circuit?

 

[davedasave]

what's on the kitchen circuit? its only got a 6A mcb, if it's just the lights then can't you extend that to accomodate the upstairs light,

 

[sparkzilla]

Thanks,

The kitchen currently has 4 50w downlights 240v.
it also rums 2 x transformers and 4 12w cupboard lights. Is 6A mcb not sufficient for this?

 

[davedasave]

yeah they'll only be drawing just over an amp, if you used this circuit you could still afford to have around 5 100w lights upstairs 240 volts x 6 amps = 1440 watts

i thought as it said kitchen it might have been running sockets or something else other than just the lights

 

[sparkzilla]

I had considered about connecting to the kitchen, but i was just wondering about having a separate circuit. However the comment about loosing the heating if somthing goes wrong did not occure to me.

I think i will wire up the three bedrooms with the kitchen circuit. I have to have a new bathroom installed next year along with new electrics (done by a sparky). Maybe i could then reconnect the whole upstairs on the same circuit as the new bathroom.

I assume this will be OK?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

If you want a separate circuit why not put another B6 in the spare non-RCD way in the CU?