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"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
David Looser wrote:
Sorry - we normally call them cookers, so I missed it. A complete
electric cooker would normally have its own radial here too. But most
here would go for a gas hob and electric oven - some of which can be
run from a 13 amp socket.

I've not met an oven with a 13A plug, maybe this is a recent innovation.
I have a gas (bottled, I'm off the gas main) hob and a built-in double
oven which is connected via a 45A "cooker point" to a radial circuit
with a 40A MCB on the other end of it. Though there is a 13A socket in
the cooker point into which the microwave is plugged, so that shares the
40A with the oven.

My house, built in 2000, has a single oven and spark unit for lighting the
gas hob powered from adjacent 3-pin-plugs under the worktop (I only
discovered them when I needed to remove the oven for some reason). The
socket is switched via a multi-way switch unit which also has marked
switches for the built-in fridge/freezer, the immersion heater and the
washing machine. Until I found the hidden socket for the oven, I assumed
that it was hard-wired into a conventional cooker point. I'm not sure which
circuit all the kitchen appliances are on, but I think it may be a dedicated
one, not the ring main that serves the rest of the ground floor.

While we're talking about electrical safety, what is the current (scuse that
unintentional pun) advice on extending the lead of a freezer? I know you
have to use cable that is rated for 13A (1.5 mm^2 wire rather than 1 mm^2)
and conventional extension cables must be unrolled to avoid inductive
heating. But providing you use a cable of the correct current rating and
which is no longer than it needs to be, joined to the original cable using a
proper in-line junction box, is there a problem? Many internet resources say
"don't do it - get an electrician to fit a socket close to the freezer",
probably on a brand-new radial line, since it is a faff rerouting a ring
main to include an additional socket. But SWMBO's father, a qualified
electrician, said it's a load of crap having a blanket ban, and is only to
guard against numpties trying to use extension cable that is rated too low.

Is it a no-no to have a spur coming off a ring main? When I was fitting a
replacement mains socket in SWMBO's house to replace one whose faceplate had
cracked, I was surprised to find *three* cables (ie 3 live, 3 neutral, 3
earth wires). I duly connected all of them to the new socket, but should the
extra socket (wherever it may be) really be connected via the ring main?
It's a 1930s house, rewired with red/black/green wiring rather than
brown/blue/green-and-yellow, though I gather the wiring colours are only
mandatory for equipment cable and that it's quite normal to find even modern
house wiring (lighting, ring mains) in the "old" colours, so it's difficult
to deduce when the rewiring was done and therefore what building regs
applied at the time.