Cooker on Ring!!

[charliefunkuk]

A good friend of mine has recently had a new extension put on his house and part of this work involved obviously electrical work. However the problem I am about to point on we cannot be sure if it was like this before the extension was built. Anyway the upshot of it is that when his wife was using the cooker, tumble dryer and washing machine together, the circuit tripped out! Turning off the tripped circuit cuts power to all of these sockets including the cooker and the upstairs sockets. this would lead me to now believe that the whole of the house including the cooker is on one ring. Am I right in saying that the cooker has to be on a seperate feed to the fuseboard? Also the upstairs seems to have an immersion heater wired to it. I would dread to think what its trying to pull running all this off one 2.5mm socket ring main. Would he have comback on the builder who carried out the building work (he contracted the electricians) and wouldnt the sparky have to correct this when he was adding the extension to it if he saw the cooker was on the ring main?? The silly thing is that there are plenty of spare spaces in the fuseboard, so why didnt the sparky just run the new cables during the extension works!!

Advise would be appreciated

Neil

 

[Dr_Doolittle]

I doubt very much that the whole house is wired from a single MCB. Check if it's an MCB or the RCD that has tripped (Do you know the difference? it might be explained in the wiki somewhere). If it's the RCD that tripped, one of the appliances is likely to be faulty.

 

[charliefunkuk]

Ok, when everything appears to be working fine and I turn off the switch at the fuseboard the whole house sockets stop working as does the cooker, tumble dryer and anything else plugged into a socket. Surely this would indicate that some clown has wired the lot into this one circuit?

Neil

 

[Dr_Doolittle]

An RCD will usually protect all the circuits except the lighting circuits, so by turning of the RCD, you will loose power to all sockets etc. In addition to the RCD each circuit is protected with an MCB. Typically, there is an MCB for the upstairs sockets, one for the downstairs sockets, one for the kitchen sockets, one for the cooker, etc....

Is there a test button beside the 'switch' you turned off? Do you have a picture?

 

[charliefunkuk]

Its the MCB I am turning off. I can see the lighting is on 2 MCBs the opposite side of the board (I assume therefore not protected by the RCD), but its when I turn off the MCB all this goes off hence my reason for thinking that its all wired into one circuit.

Havnt got a picture at the moment as I am away from my friends house.

Also I noticed the board is all labelled up incorrectly. There is or was a cooker only MCB, but the one its labelled up to be on most certainly does not touch the cooker.

 

[comms]

If you are turning off or removing fuse/mcb & all the sockets are going off along with the cooker, then yes it sounds like you only have one socket circuit & the cooker is on this circuit also.

It's not uncommon to find older properties (as late as 80's) with only one socket circuit.

Has the cu been changed during this building work ?
If so it may be a case that you could have 2 rings running off 1 mcb.

It is pretty much common practise these days to wire the kitchen on it's own radial (4mm) or ring (2.5) 32amp circuit.

 

[charliefunkuk]

the original house is 1970s but the fuseboard looks more recent. What I cant understand is that for a 4 bedroom house there is only about 6 fuses being used. I guess the way to check it is take the cover off the consumer unit and see which MSBs have wires into them!

 

[comms]

Also I noticed the board is all labelled up incorrectly. There is or was a cooker only MCB, but the one its labelled up to be on most certainly does not touch the cooker.

Was the kitchen moved into the new extension ?
Does the cooker have an isolation switch that works ?
Is there only one mcb labled as sockets ?
Do the lights in the extension go off with the sockets ?

Sounds like the sparks or builder may have binned the cooker circuit as to much hassel to extend/move and just extended the ringmain into extension & slung the cooker on that (just an idea).

Best get someone in to take a look.

 

[JohnD]

is it an electric cooker, or gas, or both?

 

[Demonic]

the original house is 1970s but the fuseboard looks more recent. What I cant understand is that for a 4 bedroom house there is only about 6 fuses being used. I guess the way to check it is take the cover off the consumer unit and see which MSBs have wires into them!

My 4 bed house only had a six-way CU before I upgraded it. That said I did have two ring circuits and a separate cooker circuit (plus an immersion heater and two lighting circuits). My house was built in the late eighties so it isn't that uncommon.

However, if they have all your sockets and the cooker on one circuit it would be interesting to know what's running off the other 5 ways (electric showers etc?).

 

[charliefunkuk]

The cooker is electric as is the hob. But I am going to take a closer look tonight to try to get to the bottom of it, and if it looks as if there is a potential problem we will just have to get the building firm back who did the house! But I wonder how they got it passed building control!!

The kitchen was extended in the upheaval so yes this is part of the extension.

 

[securespark]

You have not mentioned the hob until now. Has that got its own circuit?

What size is the oven - is it plugged in to a s/o?

 

[JohnD]

cooker

oven

 

[Steve]

My grandad's detached 3 bed house was built late 60's, early 70's, and that only has one socket ring downstairs, and the immersion heater is run off this too. The whole heating system is original, nothing has been changed for 40 years. But they never have a problem with the ring tripping, as theres only 2 of them! The ring even supplies an outhouse, 2 fridges, a freezer, the garage, kitchen, oven, living room . . .

 

[plugwash]

fridges and freezers don't draw much except briefly on startup, neither do ordinary kettles (some big fast boil ones do take 3KW but in my experiance theese are the exception not the rule) or other normal domestic appliances

as long as they only use two out of the immersion oven (you don't say what they do for a hob but i assume its either on a seperate circuit or on gas) and if they have them washing machine and dishwasher at a time. This is especially true if the ring is on a 30A rewirable.

for many years our wiring was protected by a 6 way wylex standard with 2x5A rewirable (lights upstairs and down) and 4x15A rewirable (3 rings, upstairs downstairs and kitchen and a radial for the immersion and loft socket). The kitchen fuse (which supported a washing machine dishwasher fridge and freezer) was the one that blew most often but even that only blew a couple of times a year.

we now have a modern box with more circuits (9 i think). the lights trip pretty much every time a bulb blows, any wiring work requires extreme care not to touch neutral and earth together if you don't want to take out every socket in the house and i've even seen the B16 for the loft socket taken out by a bulb failure in an inspection lamp.

such is progress