General > General Technical Chat

UK electrical wiring

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Monkeh:

--- Quote from: IanB on February 14, 2021, 03:37:52 am ---
--- Quote from: Monkeh on February 14, 2021, 12:59:29 am ---Being that it's the normal method of construction here, it's quite normal to deal with chasing out the plaster and a little brick if needed. The other option is surface trunking, which is cheap, fast, and ugly, and how pretty much every council home will have been done.

--- End quote ---

I think the plaster isn't deep enough, it's only a skim on the surface of the bricks.

--- End quote ---

It's a lot thicker than you think it is. The base coat is usually up to half an inch thick.

nfmax:

--- Quote from: Monkeh on February 14, 2021, 01:14:40 am ---
--- Quote from: james_s on February 14, 2021, 01:09:20 am ---
--- Quote from: IanB on February 14, 2021, 12:55:31 am ---I am rather curious about the best way to rewire a 1960's brick home, since cutting channels in the wall to bury the new cable seems to be too expensive/too much trouble for contractors to contemplate. Now if they had built the house in the first place with buried conduit, it would just be a matter of pulling new cable through in place of the old...

BTW, not many people have died from earthquakes in the UK. I think there has been maybe one casualty in the last few hundred years when a roof tile landed on his head.

--- End quote ---

I've never heard of an earthquake in the UK, I haven't looked it up but I don't think it's very common at all there. Here on the West coast of the US they are a frequent occurrence though. Most are not of sufficient magnitude to be felt but every few years there's a small but noticeable tremor and usually every 30 years or so there's one large enough to cause some damage so it's a concern here. If not for that then brick and concrete would be very appealing for the reasons you mention.

--- End quote ---

There have been 25 recorded in the last 50 days. At least four of them felt. None sufficient to bother anything built properly.

--- End quote ---

It's been almost 90 years since the last major earthquake  (Richter magnitude > 6) in the UK. The epicentre being out at sea, damage was limited. However, the Dogger Bank is now a major centre of offshore windfarm development.

nctnico:

--- Quote from: IanB on February 14, 2021, 03:37:52 am ---
--- Quote from: Monkeh on February 14, 2021, 12:59:29 am ---Being that it's the normal method of construction here, it's quite normal to deal with chasing out the plaster and a little brick if needed. The other option is surface trunking, which is cheap, fast, and ugly, and how pretty much every council home will have been done.

--- End quote ---

I think the plaster isn't deep enough, it's only a skim on the surface of the bricks. Surely to cut deep enough to bury wiring you need to chisel out the mortar between the bricks? I remember when my father was installing spurs he spent quite some time with a hammer and chisel doing that. And the original wiring was installed the same way. Obviously cutting out holes for the boxes involves even more chiseling. The apprentices when they were building houses in previous decades must have had plenty of work to do.

--- End quote ---
Nowadays you use a mill (*) for the conduit and round drill for the junction boxes. Don't chissel out the mortar; that is too narrow for the conduit to fit into anyway.

* something like this:

or this:

coppice:

--- Quote from: IanB on February 14, 2021, 12:55:31 am ---Now if they had built the house in the first place with buried conduit, it would just be a matter of pulling new cable through in place of the old...

--- End quote ---
No it wouldn't. By the time the place needs rewiring usage patterns have changed, new bits and pieces altered from the original layout of the wiring, and the amount you can simply pull through the original conduits is limited. Conduit always sounds so flexible, but seldom really works out.

IanB:

--- Quote from: coppice on February 14, 2021, 05:03:22 pm ---No it wouldn't. By the time the place needs rewiring usage patterns have changed, new bits and pieces altered from the original layout of the wiring, and the amount you can simply pull through the original conduits is limited. Conduit always sounds so flexible, but seldom really works out.
--- End quote ---

For instance, I grew up in a house that was built around 1960, and the builders only included one socket in each bedroom. I'm not sure how they ever thought that would be enough.

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