Hi,
I'm not a qualified electrician, but hope I know enough to know what's safe and what's not, so just wanted to get an opinion about whether I am right about something:
I have just moved into a rented property, which is a bungalow with a loft conversion done 30 years or so ago. The wiring in the place is completely crackers: the upstairs lights, for example, are on the same circuit as the two downstairs bedrooms.
My house mate and I are friends with the landlord, and he is letting us decorate the upstairs. Today, he has removed all the lights and sockets so that we can remove the old wall paper and paint up to them. He has taped the wires up from the sockets/lights to keep them together and insulate them. The mcb for the upstairs sockets and lights are switched off whilst we do it.
However, it turns out that the shower (downstairs), installed relatively recently, is connected to the upstairs sockets, and I have expressed concern to my housemate that because we don't know exactly where the power from the shower was taken from, that we might be best not to switch the mcb back on to use it, because it might be via the ring that is presently only held together with insulating tape.
Moreover, after trying to investigate where the power for the shower is taken from, it turns out that it is wired into a 13 amp plug, and plugged into a normal 13amp socket (not fused), which I am 99.9% certain must be against electrical regs??? My understanding is that a shower must either be on its own circuit, or taken from a spur off the sockets its own fused switch??
Switching power back on to the exposed wires aside, am I right to be concerned about the path of current to the shower via the taped up wires, and am I right about the legality of the wiring itself -- i.e. from a normal 13 amp plug!
I'm not a qualified electrician, but hope I know enough to know what's safe and what's not, so just wanted to get an opinion about whether I am right about something:
I have just moved into a rented property, which is a bungalow with a loft conversion done 30 years or so ago. The wiring in the place is completely crackers: the upstairs lights, for example, are on the same circuit as the two downstairs bedrooms.
My house mate and I are friends with the landlord, and he is letting us decorate the upstairs. Today, he has removed all the lights and sockets so that we can remove the old wall paper and paint up to them. He has taped the wires up from the sockets/lights to keep them together and insulate them. The mcb for the upstairs sockets and lights are switched off whilst we do it.
However, it turns out that the shower (downstairs), installed relatively recently, is connected to the upstairs sockets, and I have expressed concern to my housemate that because we don't know exactly where the power from the shower was taken from, that we might be best not to switch the mcb back on to use it, because it might be via the ring that is presently only held together with insulating tape.
Moreover, after trying to investigate where the power for the shower is taken from, it turns out that it is wired into a 13 amp plug, and plugged into a normal 13amp socket (not fused), which I am 99.9% certain must be against electrical regs??? My understanding is that a shower must either be on its own circuit, or taken from a spur off the sockets its own fused switch??
Switching power back on to the exposed wires aside, am I right to be concerned about the path of current to the shower via the taped up wires, and am I right about the legality of the wiring itself -- i.e. from a normal 13 amp plug!
