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Chris Green Chris Green is offline
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Default Options for switching electrically heated towel rail in wet room?

We're aiming to put an electrically heated (as well as CH heated)
towel rail in the new shower/wet room. How are these normally switched
on and off?

Possibilities seem to me to be:-

1 Pull switch, but this feels wrong for a towel rail somehow, also
difficult to provide a clear indicator, a little glow by the
switch on the ceiling isn't very obvious.

2 Normal switch outside the wet-room. Possible but again seems
rather counter-intuitive, though one could at least have a nice
obvious 'on' indicator.

3 A switch in the wet room but outside the zones. This is fairly
easy in this case as the switch could be positioned on the soil
pipe casing on the opposite side of the wet-room from the shower.

4 A Quinetic switch, but this doesn't have an indicator so I'd have
to add that as well, a rather expensive solution in total. Can
one get 'indicator' lamps as stand-alone accessories?

5 One could get all clever and have a low voltage (SELV) switch and
circuit controlling a contactor/relay but this does seem a bit
OTT.

The third option seems most "easy to use and find" but is it actually
OK? Can one get switches which are particularly suitable for
damp[ish] locations?

If I go for the Quinetic switch option it would make sense to get a
dual controller as I'm aiming to use a Quinetic switch for the lights.
However this raises the issue of what to connect it all to. All the
towel radiator electric heaters say they must be run from an FCU but I
guess they are assuming being connected to a power circuit with 32A or
20A breaker. Can I connect the heater direct to a lighting circuit as
this is what I would be connecting the lighting Quinetic switch to.
It will have a 6A breaker so I can't really se an issue with this.
The instructions for the Screwfix ones say "The fused spur should be
fitted with at least a 5 amp fuse to the appropriate standard." which
doesn't make a lot of sense! Would a 13 amp fuse be better?? :-)

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Chris Green
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