Is the following acceptable?

[coolhands]

Running a spur from bedroom ring main through this volex 13A RCD FCU (30ma) to this Honeywell 1.8kW Quartz Bathroom Heater? With the volex being in the bedroom (cupboard), and then the cable a straight run up the wall, across the attic, and drop down into the heater? (Using one continuous run of 2.5mm squared cable). The cable length would be about 8 metres all in.

Thanks

 

[Chri5]

Not really, the isolation should ideally be in the same room, if you have a ceiling height over 225cm you'd be outside zones and could put the unit on the wall in the room.

Look at the picture and see if you can find somewhere outside the zones for the non IP rated rcd f/ spur to be fitted

You will also need to make sure the heater unit (unlees IP rated to allowed in zone use) is outside zones

 

[coolhands]

thanks for the reply

The ceiling height is 244cms. The wall is 80cm away from bath / sink. So the heater would be in zone 2 I believe, but there is space above it / but below ceiling / to mount the RCD.

Is that correct?

I will check to see if the heater has an IP rating.

 

[coolhands]

It is IP23 according to the label on the unit.

 

[ericmark]

One would normally look for IPx4.

I find it a little silly asking about what is allowed when we all know to fit anything new in a bathroom requires Part P notification. And to DIY therefore costs more than getting a registered electrician who is a member of a scheme to do the work.

It is like asking if I drive to the 30 speed limit is this acceptable when I have no licence? We all know you can comply with all the visible driving laws but without a licence it is still not acceptable.

If you mean will I get caught then you can really do what you like and the only time you get caught is when something goes wrong.

This is of course the problem. We have all seen horror stories and really bad workmanship but until some one ends up in hospital or the morgue few questions are asked. And once it does happen its a bit late.

As electricians we have to insure our selves and inspect and test each job. Including writing a report to say what we have done. In the main the report helps us as if some one alters it after we leave likely we can prove due to readings it was not like that when we left. However we are not perfect and from time to time we do find our own mistakes before anyone gets hurt. But to do that we need £750 worth of test gear.

This explains why the government want registered electricians only to work where water may produce more hazards than normal. I agree not perfect and there are some daft bits too. But I would always test and unless you can test I would advise not to DIY in areas where one gets wet and wear no cloths to reduce the current flow.

 

[coolhands]

ok thanks. There is an electrician who lives on my street so I might ask him if I can do some of the manual work (like run the cable; make the holes up into the loft etc) but not connect anything, to reduce the cost. He is always busy so probably won't mind.

Are all of these heaters suitable for a bathroom? It's either these or a downflow one, right?

http://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Heating_Index/Wall_Bar_Heaters/index.html

thanks again (I am hearing your advice)

 

[OwainDIYer]

One would normally look for IPx4.

I find it a little silly asking about what is allowed when we all know to fit anything new in a bathroom requires Part P notification.

It's sensible to ask what is possible/permitted before paying an electrician £60 to come out and say "regulations says no"

This is of course the problem. We have all seen horror stories and really bad workmanship but until some one ends up in hospital or the morgue few questions are asked. And once it does happen its a bit late.

Most cases of bad workmanship seem to be by cowboys, rather than DIY.

This explains why the government want registered electricians only to work where water may produce more hazards than normal.

The government wanted eelctrical work to go through building control or a registered person scheme to reduce working on the black, and of course registered schemes were all in favour of restrictive practices. Safety has nothing to do with it, as the government's own regulatory impact assessment showed that deaths would rise (and they have) since the introduction of Part P.

Countries like Australia are considering relaxing their regulations about electrical installation.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

The government wanted eelctrical work to go through building control or a registered person scheme to reduce working on the black, and of course registered schemes were all in favour of restrictive practices.

It was entirely the latter, and none of the former - the industry bodies had been badgering the Govt for years for something like the electrical equivalent of Corgi but the Govt didn't want to know. I think eventually they gave in to shut them up

Safety has nothing to do with it, as the government's own regulatory impact assessment showed that deaths would rise (and they have) since the introduction of Part P.

No - the RIA did not show that deaths would rise, but it did show that the numbers involved were so small as to be statistically insignificant, so anybody with a rudimentary grasp of stats would know that there could not be any reduction that could be attributed to the new regulations.

Countries like Australia are considering relaxing their regulations about electrical installation.

There is an excellent precedent for that - NZ relaxed theirs several years ago and they did see a significant drop in casualties. Mind - the Australian regulations are much tougher than ours.

 

[ajrobb]

From a layman's point of view, regulations must be wrong or they wouldn't need changing so often and they'd be the same in every country. There must be a best practice for most situations that is likely to comply with future 'corrections' to regulations.

For example, wiring in steel conduit was standard practice when they built with lime mortar and used rubber insulation. Strangely, it is one of the few installations that can still be used without RCD 'protection'. RCDs do not protect circuits, they can only isolate them after they are damaged. SC can also be used outside of the dodgy 'prescribed zones', where shallow T+E can be installed legally. (They are dodgy because Joe Public, with his hammer and nail, doesn't know where they are and older wiring can be found outside them.) Cannot steel conduit still be used for CPC? Rodents tend not to chew through it either.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

From a layman's point of view, regulations must be wrong or they wouldn't need changing so often and they'd be the same in every country.

There are 195 countries in the world - which one has the right road traffic regulations and which 194 are wrong?

Cannot steel conduit still be used for CPC?

Yes, but it's a lot harder to maintain cpc continuity as mods are done over the years, a great deal more effort involved in conduit work, and not many DIYers will have the wherewithal or inclination to do it. Nor basic DIs either I suspect.

But you can use earthed conduit for protection without it being the cpc.

 

[ajrobb]

but it's a lot harder to maintain cpc continuity as mods are done over the years, a great deal more effort involved in conduit work, and not many DIYers will have the wherewithal or inclination to do it. Nor basic DIs either I suspect.

Would that be a bad thing? It just seems to be an example of a good practice that has been squeezed out to make more profit.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Would it be a bad thing for professionals to install systems whose integrity they know would be seriously, possibly fatally, undermined by the actions of people in the future, when there were alternative installation schemes available to them which were not likely to suffer the same degradation?

I think so.

 

[ajrobb]

undermined

I take your point about using SC as CPC. I suppose I grew up with SC in the house and, therefore, consider it proper. I watched with interest as my father rewired the house from SC to pyro in the late 60s and helped him with mega insulation testing (he was a radar officer in the war then an industrial chemist, so low-voltage wiring and pyro pots were no challenge ). Just like plastic plumbing, I consider naked plastic wiring is cheap and only adequate.

The point I was making was more that steel conduit is still seen as a good solution to difficult problems. Arguably, it is one practice that has stood the test of time.