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David W.E. Roberts
 
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Default Case of the unknown circuit

Quick top posted guess :-)

The spare 6A breaker was for the upstairs lighting - looks the correct
rating and cable.
The 16A breaker was for the immersion - again the correct rating and cable.

The 6a breaker failed.
Some North American horse rider with big hat and spurs decided that the
easiest way to fix things was to connect (upstairs) the immersion feed to
the lighting circuit, and connect the immersion heater to a 13A socket.

If you look hard upstairs you may find where this was done.
If so, you might be able to undo it.
i.e. replace the breaker with a new one, reconnect the lighting, reconnect
the immersion to the 16A direct feed.

As I say, this is only a guess.

Cheers
Dave R


"David Hearn" wrote in message
...
A while back I asked people to aid me in working out what my electric
circuits were. Well, I've now done some further investigation and things
are a little more strange.

I have 6 circuits:

32A - electric shower
32A - downstairs ring including a FCU off to the garage and a single

socket
radial off the same MCB.
32A - upstairs ring (including a spur somewhere off it to feed a socket
which the immersion heater comes off.
6A - downstairs lighting
16A - upstairs lighting and loft lighting
6A - unknown.

People had suggested that someone had wired up the wrong MCB to the

upstairs
lighting and the unknown 6A MCB thinking the 16A should be for the

immersion
heater. However, upon further investigation, I've found that the

immersion
heater socket is a spur from the upstairs ring. We don't actually use it,
and the plug/socket is slightly scorched!

I've also found that the unknown 6A circuit goes somewhere upstairs via

the
cavity (in the same direction as the shower cable - straight up) - where

it
ends up, I've no idea. Also that 6A MCB is dead. I noticed that it would
turn off very easily at almost the slightest touch when the others took a
little more force. I checked with a multimeter and the MCB makes contact

at
about 2/3 on, but when fully on its disconnected. As a result, this

circuit
has never been on for the 6 months we've lived here and there's nothing
electrical that we know of that isn't working - so we've no idea where it
goes.

Any ideas what the unknown circuit is going, what it may be connected to?

I
can only assume that it was for something which isn't used any more - but
you'd have expected them to have disconnected it at the CU! It does mean
that I have a spare slot in my CU - which may be useful for something in

the
future.

Incidentally, both the upstairs lighting circuit (I think 2.5mm T&E) and

the
unknown circuit (possibly 1mm T&E) appears to be in grey T&E where the

rest
is in 100% white T&E. It may have had white on it at some point as it is
clearly grey, but around the curved edges looks almost like white paint

was
on it as some is still there with an almost flaky appearance (the flat

part
is grey). For the lighting circuit, this is both at the CU end, and the
loft end where the lighting comes off it. It looks the same sort of stuff
as the white T&E and is marked with the Henley trade name (250V specced).

Thanks

D

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