fatherjack
New member
A few years ago I bought a house and rewired it. Read lots of stuff before I started, got pretty well versed in domestic wiring, borrowed an electrician friend's Megger, did a really good job of rewiring the house according the Council inspector. Job's a good-un.
Now I'm looking at our Scout Hut's wiring, to see if I can sort out their wiring. It's about 60 years old, and it look's like it's had a rewire once. There are currently no RCDs, and some of the sockets in the building don't work. At a bare minimum I want to get everything protected by RCDs, even if I didn't touch anything else.
For some reason, the Scout Hut has a three phase supply. It doesn't appear to really need it. There are 11 circuits:
In future we're hoping to use induction hobs and air fryers when the Scouts are doing cooking, so could have six 2kW induction hobs and six 1.5kW air fryers running at the same time.
To heat the building in the winter we currently just have three 2kW fan heaters which turn on using timers a couple of hours before the meetings. Ideally we'd have some background heat all the time so that we didn't have problems with damp, but that might be something for another time.
My idea is to replace the current DB with a modern one (probably Contactum because they're less expensive and I used them in my house), with a four pole isolator and RCBOs for all the circuits. I'm going to keep the lighting circuits and the water heater circuit, as they appear to be ok. I was thinking of having either two or three rings in the hall - probably one for each side of the room, and a ring for the kitchen. The cooker circuit will go, I may add a circuit to send power out to the garage (I found a coil of 50m of armoured 4-core in their garage today - no idea why there's that much of it, but I may as well make use of it).
So, as well as wanting some advice about whether this makes sense or not, I also have a question about isolators and switch disconnectors. We currently have a 4-pole isolator on the meter board. The tails go into what I think is called a switch disconnector (a box with a big handle which disconnects everything), and then from there it goes into the DB. Is the switch disconnector necessary in this situation? I can see why you might want it in an industrial building where you may need to cut the power while everything is running, without worrying about arcing, but in our little installation is it really necessary, especially as we have an isolator on the meter board? I could just leave it, but the new DBs are much bigger that the old one, and there's not enough room to put a new DB abover the switch, so I was thinking to remove the switch to gain space. If this is a stupid idea however, I won't do it!
Anyway, thanks for reading all that (or just skipping to the last paragraph), and I look forward to some helpful advice
Now I'm looking at our Scout Hut's wiring, to see if I can sort out their wiring. It's about 60 years old, and it look's like it's had a rewire once. There are currently no RCDs, and some of the sockets in the building don't work. At a bare minimum I want to get everything protected by RCDs, even if I didn't touch anything else.
For some reason, the Scout Hut has a three phase supply. It doesn't appear to really need it. There are 11 circuits:
- Six 15A circuits for fan heaters, which have since been removed. (Evenly distributed across all phases).
- A 5A circuit for lighting in the main hall and the kitchen (L1)
- A 15A circuit for the water heater (L2)
- A 30A circuit for the ring main (L2)
- A 5A circuit for the toilet and entrance lights (L3)
- A 30A circuit for the cooker, which doesn't work. (L3)
In future we're hoping to use induction hobs and air fryers when the Scouts are doing cooking, so could have six 2kW induction hobs and six 1.5kW air fryers running at the same time.
To heat the building in the winter we currently just have three 2kW fan heaters which turn on using timers a couple of hours before the meetings. Ideally we'd have some background heat all the time so that we didn't have problems with damp, but that might be something for another time.
My idea is to replace the current DB with a modern one (probably Contactum because they're less expensive and I used them in my house), with a four pole isolator and RCBOs for all the circuits. I'm going to keep the lighting circuits and the water heater circuit, as they appear to be ok. I was thinking of having either two or three rings in the hall - probably one for each side of the room, and a ring for the kitchen. The cooker circuit will go, I may add a circuit to send power out to the garage (I found a coil of 50m of armoured 4-core in their garage today - no idea why there's that much of it, but I may as well make use of it).
So, as well as wanting some advice about whether this makes sense or not, I also have a question about isolators and switch disconnectors. We currently have a 4-pole isolator on the meter board. The tails go into what I think is called a switch disconnector (a box with a big handle which disconnects everything), and then from there it goes into the DB. Is the switch disconnector necessary in this situation? I can see why you might want it in an industrial building where you may need to cut the power while everything is running, without worrying about arcing, but in our little installation is it really necessary, especially as we have an isolator on the meter board? I could just leave it, but the new DBs are much bigger that the old one, and there's not enough room to put a new DB abover the switch, so I was thinking to remove the switch to gain space. If this is a stupid idea however, I won't do it!
Anyway, thanks for reading all that (or just skipping to the last paragraph), and I look forward to some helpful advice
