In article ,
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Why do you find ring mains odd? Once you have daisy chained all the
sockets it is an extremely sensible idea to complete the loop back to

If you happen to have laid them out in a ring manner anyway, yes.

Why wouldn't you? There are less runs back to the CU than doing the same
with radials, so surely not too difficult to design?

the distribution board. For the cost of a few feet of cable, you have
halved both the effective resistance of the mains and the distance to
the furthest socket. I can't imagine a single reason not to do it.

d

I can see the halving of the resistance (well, at the most remote point
anyway), but not the halving of the distance.

I think maintenance (I mean when modifying, not just general wear and
tear): most extras added to ring mains are spurs. (Also, instinctively,
it's easier to know when one is isolated with a spur, though that
shouldn't be done that way.)

You are allowed to add spurs within the regs, but why is it so much more
difficult to simply add a socket properly to the ring?

--
*Certain frogs can be frozen solid, then thawed, and survive *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.