Hi all,
Hoping to potentially find some ideas here to help us find a way forward.
We have a thatched cottage we let out for holiday visitors, as well as enjoying time at. Owned it over 20 years, doing our best as custodians to keep it in good condition
Our electrical certificate needed refreshing this summer, and the electrician we got was pretty thorough.
He did, however, flag up some concerns over the "insulation resistance" of the upstairs lighting circuit.
The value seen on the circuit was 2.5MΩ. Apparently below 1 is a direct 'fail'
As comparison, the downstairs lights were 55....the cooker 500, the hob (directly behind the consumer unit) '>999'
He wasn't happy enough to give a 5-year certificate, so we only have 12 months, with the goal of 'remedying' things soon
The previous certificate was done after they did some chunky work moving the main consumer unit from a hard to access space under the hob to go outside in the meter box....& all circuits are listed on that as >200, which makes me think perhaps they didn't 'properly' test things
The house has two bedrooms upstairs, plus a bathroom off one: all with ceiling lighting. Also a cupboard with lighting and a wall light over the stairs..
I am not a sparks, but we are considering solutions to this - ultimately, we want the place to be as safe as possible....albeit ideally without thousands of pounds of work
He has a couple of ideas which we will examine more later this week.
First one: to run SWA cable up into the attic, to replace all existing 'regular' plastic power cables.
SWA into ceiling 'light boxes' in the rooms below, where their can be junctions (none allowed in the attic).
Using some 'kinetic' switches in the rooms to be able to power the lights without any physical connection. I've not found any that connect to 240v lighting, only some that connect to 12v under cupboard-style lighting.
Sounds like we would need a fairly chunky box for the cabling to be done in the rooms below, & their ceilings are not that high....
Second one: to examine options for conduit. This might sound the simplest, but I believe might still require perhaps significant rewiring in order to get cabling into it. He appears less keen on this....ultimately, our attic is relatively small, & perhaps the first option 'sounds' the easier?
Has anyone here undertaken either of these....or indeed undertaken work to remove perhaps all wiring from the attic space below the thatch?
I'm also toying with how we could remove all attic wires - perhaps running wall lights from sockets, but the bathroom and staircase lighting might be harder (no sockets)
Any hints, tips, dos/don'ts, etc, gratefully received!
Hoping to potentially find some ideas here to help us find a way forward.
We have a thatched cottage we let out for holiday visitors, as well as enjoying time at. Owned it over 20 years, doing our best as custodians to keep it in good condition
Our electrical certificate needed refreshing this summer, and the electrician we got was pretty thorough.
He did, however, flag up some concerns over the "insulation resistance" of the upstairs lighting circuit.
The value seen on the circuit was 2.5MΩ. Apparently below 1 is a direct 'fail'
As comparison, the downstairs lights were 55....the cooker 500, the hob (directly behind the consumer unit) '>999'
He wasn't happy enough to give a 5-year certificate, so we only have 12 months, with the goal of 'remedying' things soon
The previous certificate was done after they did some chunky work moving the main consumer unit from a hard to access space under the hob to go outside in the meter box....& all circuits are listed on that as >200, which makes me think perhaps they didn't 'properly' test things
The house has two bedrooms upstairs, plus a bathroom off one: all with ceiling lighting. Also a cupboard with lighting and a wall light over the stairs..
I am not a sparks, but we are considering solutions to this - ultimately, we want the place to be as safe as possible....albeit ideally without thousands of pounds of work
He has a couple of ideas which we will examine more later this week.
First one: to run SWA cable up into the attic, to replace all existing 'regular' plastic power cables.
SWA into ceiling 'light boxes' in the rooms below, where their can be junctions (none allowed in the attic).
Using some 'kinetic' switches in the rooms to be able to power the lights without any physical connection. I've not found any that connect to 240v lighting, only some that connect to 12v under cupboard-style lighting.
Sounds like we would need a fairly chunky box for the cabling to be done in the rooms below, & their ceilings are not that high....
Second one: to examine options for conduit. This might sound the simplest, but I believe might still require perhaps significant rewiring in order to get cabling into it. He appears less keen on this....ultimately, our attic is relatively small, & perhaps the first option 'sounds' the easier?
Has anyone here undertaken either of these....or indeed undertaken work to remove perhaps all wiring from the attic space below the thatch?
I'm also toying with how we could remove all attic wires - perhaps running wall lights from sockets, but the bathroom and staircase lighting might be harder (no sockets)
Any hints, tips, dos/don'ts, etc, gratefully received!
