I'm hoping some of you guys out there on the forum can perhaps provide the benefit of your experience with the below issue:-
Currently working on a job where the garage which is approximately 25 - 30 feet away and adjacent to the house, has its power fed to it via SWA connected off the back of a 13amp double socket located in the utility room off the kitchen.
House is a new build, built in 2010 and power to garage installed by the builders. The owners have requested to have additional circuits installed in the garage for which an upgrade to the existing DB is required; however before I get into that I wanted to ask some advice.
The SWA is terminated within the garage to a 2-way 63mA DB, protected via a double pole 30mA RCD with 2 MCB's of 6A & 16A respectively. Obviously the cables and circuits within the garage are protected by the RCD in the DB, however my concern is the SWA cable is coming off the RFC [from the socket in the utility room] and the SWA is therefore in my mind not protected fully other than via the main RCD in the main CCU as a result of being connected to the RFC in the main house, so any fault in the SWA will cause potential problems not just with the cable itself, but potentially with the RCD in the main CCU and that of the RFC it is fed from.
To get round this I was wondering whether one of the following options might be a better approach
1. Connect the SWA to a separate FSU so as to provide a level protection if a fault occurred in the cable, by way of discrimination
2. Or use an FSU that has inbuilt RCD protection, but I'm not certain an FSU of this type is available as I have never come across one
3. Run the circuit directly back to the CCU, however this will pose a real headache as there is no easy route, if any from what I can see, to the CCU at the front of the property
4. Leave it and do nothing and hope that the SWA cable is never compromised, ending up in further faults occurring
Any ideas greatly appreciated.
Stuartnt
Currently working on a job where the garage which is approximately 25 - 30 feet away and adjacent to the house, has its power fed to it via SWA connected off the back of a 13amp double socket located in the utility room off the kitchen.
House is a new build, built in 2010 and power to garage installed by the builders. The owners have requested to have additional circuits installed in the garage for which an upgrade to the existing DB is required; however before I get into that I wanted to ask some advice.
The SWA is terminated within the garage to a 2-way 63mA DB, protected via a double pole 30mA RCD with 2 MCB's of 6A & 16A respectively. Obviously the cables and circuits within the garage are protected by the RCD in the DB, however my concern is the SWA cable is coming off the RFC [from the socket in the utility room] and the SWA is therefore in my mind not protected fully other than via the main RCD in the main CCU as a result of being connected to the RFC in the main house, so any fault in the SWA will cause potential problems not just with the cable itself, but potentially with the RCD in the main CCU and that of the RFC it is fed from.
To get round this I was wondering whether one of the following options might be a better approach
1. Connect the SWA to a separate FSU so as to provide a level protection if a fault occurred in the cable, by way of discrimination
2. Or use an FSU that has inbuilt RCD protection, but I'm not certain an FSU of this type is available as I have never come across one
3. Run the circuit directly back to the CCU, however this will pose a real headache as there is no easy route, if any from what I can see, to the CCU at the front of the property
4. Leave it and do nothing and hope that the SWA cable is never compromised, ending up in further faults occurring
Any ideas greatly appreciated.
Stuartnt