Andrew Gabriel wrote:

In article ,
Richard writes:

Is it unwise or prohibited to run heavy loads such as immersion heater
and oven via an RCD?


It's unnecessary and slightly unwise. It's not that they're heavy
loads, it's that they are stationary or fixed appliances which
don't represent any significant electrocution risk, and both these
particular appliances are known to occasionally trip RCDs which
will be inconventient in that it will stop them working when they
would otherwise have done so fine, and knock out other things.


This is how things were installed in my place when we bought it. NB the
previous owners did no DIY! FWIW


It has been quite common to RCD protect a whole installation,
even though it is not correct to do so.
I suspect this is because a 30mA RCD was often used to substitute
an older Voltage Operated earth leakage circuit breaker. These
do different things, and whilst it was correct to protect a
whole installation with a single Voltage Operated earth leakage
circuit breaker, it is not correct to do this with a single 30mA
RCD.



Thanks Andrew,

When we moved in (genuinely 5 years ago) the entire installation apart
from the freezer spur was fed from an RCD.

I fitted two CUs - one fed from the RCD and the other (lighting, garage
- with own RCD/CU - and freezer) not fed from the RCD.

In doing so I found that the upstairs ring had not been opened and
expanded to include the attic - as I presumed because there were only
two rings shown in the CU - rather a loop had been taken from the
upstairs ring into the attic and back to the same point on the upstairs
ring. But the return was not connected - just a live end tucked into
the floor void!!!!! And this was done by a building firm when they did
the attic conversion.

Maybe this sort of thing is what Part P will stop?

I now have a separate ring for each floor and one for the kitchen.

Should I relocate the oven and immersion feeds? The wiring is (IMHO)
beutifully dressed into the (RCD) CU.


Cheers

Richard

--
Real email address is RJSavage at BIGFOOT dot COM

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