Mark wrote:

Some time ago I fitted a new socket outlet in my son's bedroom. I had
no desire to go into the wall and hook into the existing ring main so
I decided to tap in somewhere else. Basically I tapped into the
immersion heater supply in the airing cupboard, (fused 30amp at the
consumer unit). Then I went through a 13amp fused spur, then up into
the attic, and then down into the bedroom using mini trunking, and
finally connected an RCD protected double socket. Everything fine.

Now I need to do the same in my daughter's room. My question is, if I
wire in parallel from the feed to the socket in my son's room do I
need to use another RCD protected socket? Or will the RCD in my son's
room provide protection for a regular parallel socket.

Safety is paramount of course but I don't want to spend 20 odd quid on
another RCD socket if I don't need to.

What exactly are you trying to achieve here? Is it a case you have young
children and you are worried they might go sticking conductive things in
sockets? Or is there some other motivation? Other than the RCD protected
socket you added, are there no other sockets in the room?

Perhaps you ought to be looking at the broader picture, and changing
your system to include RCD protection for *all* the sockets in your
house - especially those that may be used to power appliances used
outside. This would need to be done at the consumer unit end of things.

Grafting on individualy protected sockets does sound like a hard way to
do it.

If you have no plans to ever use the immersion heater, then you could
simply disconnect it and re-designate the circuit. If you changed its
MCB for a 30mA trip 20A type B RCBO, then you could use that cable as a
radial circuit to supply a number of sockets as and where you need them.
These sockets would then all have RCD protection. Perhaps you might be
better off looking at getting the CU changed for a split load unit so
you could have all socket circuite RCD protected.


--
Cheers,

John.

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