[About fixed appliances being plugged in]

John White wrote:

I was asked to PIR a large Edwardian villa that had been converted
into eight flats. In each case the flat's combi boiler had been
located in a bathroom cupboard.

This should not have been a problem as all the controls had been
positioned elsewhere. Unfortunately the installer had used a plug and
socket to connect the boiler rather than a FCU, with the result that
the tenants had used the "handy" socket to plug in other appliances.

Nick wrote:

I think I can see the point that you are possibly making... that is that
the socket
(assumed to be a double or have a multiway adaptor plugged in) may be
"overloaded".

[...]

I really can't see why this is "dangerous" !

No, sorry, you're missing the point.

I'm not concerned about the socket being overloaded. The MCB would
protect the cable assuming it had been specified correctly at the
design stage. Like fuses, MCBs protect the cable and not the
appliance.

What I am concerned about is there being (in the example I gave) a
socket installed in a bathroom. This is definitely a bad idea - as
well as being prohibited by the regs. In this case there was not even
a RCD as a backup safety device.

One flat had a hairdryer plugged into the socket and lying on the
glass shelf over the basin. Sooner or later somebody will knock it
into the basin, and then reach into the water to pull it out...

If the boiler was wired into a FCU then the socket would not have been
available to be abused in the first place.

On a PIR I would (and did) flag up such an installation as being
unsafe and requiring immediate attention.

John
--
John White,
Electrical Contractor

Oh, absolutely - you naturally see many more installations than I do, and I
can understand and completely agree that
such an installation should be (is) definitely not permitted, nor should it
be done by any D-I-Yer for just that very reason.

One day the house will be sold and almost certainly to someone who doesn't
appreciate the danger quite apart from the
fact that the installation should not give the opportunity for the danger to
arise in the first place.

Thanks for the example

Nick