upgrade

[5amp]

PS, Cheers 5amp

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Thanks B.a.s, most helpful.
I'm assuming i'll use a 6 and a 16 at the moment.

Then you might not get discrimination with the sockets - the 16A MCB might not trip before the 13A fuse at the house end blows, and you won't achieve your design goal of the convenience of separate MCB's and not having to to fiddle about behind the kitchen units.

Btw, excluding the c/u, how much to install a new 6 way in the
house,do you reckon?

Depends on so many things - you need get a number of quotes. And you should probably be thinking in terms of a bigger board than that - a 14 or 16-way split load. Sounds huge, but that actually gives you 10 or 12 circuits. Do a search here for topics relating to split load and you'll see how quickly they get used up....

 

[plugwash]

32A mcbs won't always trip before plug fuses

while mcbs may have many advantages one of their biggest disadvatages is lack of proper discrimination with plug fuses downstream

 

[kai]

That's news to me, as I always thought the 32a MCB was specially designed to discriminate correctly with a 13amp plug fuse, after all it's the mainstay of domestic power distribution in a modern home.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

32A mcbs won't always trip before plug fuses

I should hope not - it'd be bl**dy annoying for the whole ring to trip out because of an appliance fault that should just take out the plug fuse...

 

[5amp]

So, i should use a 6a for the light circuit and a ? for
the sockets.
Also, i was always lead to believe not to spur from a spur,
is this not what i'm about to do?

Cheers 5amp

 

[plugwash]

32A mcbs won't always trip before plug fuses

I should hope not - it'd be bl**dy annoying for the whole ring to trip out because of an appliance fault that should just take out the plug fuse...

it depends on the exact type of fault

but i have heared of people cutting through flex (two core so no effect on rcd) with theier hedge trimmer and it taking out the mcb and not the plug fuse

the trouble is that if you hit the mag trip on a mcb it trips insanely fast before anything has happened to the fuse

 

[L.Spark]

Discrimination is supposted to take out the plug fuse first, but in reality this doesnt happen!

MCB's just too good a match for a plug fuse