All sockets on one breaker

[adsmith]

Hi all, wondering if you guys could give me some advice. I am a maintenance electrician by trade in a power station so not too clued up on domestic regs etc however i do have some knowledge and experience on domestic so you may have to bare with my stupidity.

a relation asked if i could come round to see why his electric hob kept blowing fuses so doing some fault finding on the hob i noticed that the cooker, hob, kitchen sockets, upstairs sockets and downstairs sockets where all on the one 30amp breaker. surely this should not be the case! the hob was connected to a 3pin plug on 2.5mm cable and plugged into a socket behind a cupboard. is this also correct or safe? the 13 amp fuse kept popping in the 3 pin plug but i think that was just due to an earth fault with the hob as it was pretty old and he is in the process to getting a new one. my main concern is it'll be me who will be fitting the new hob and now i feel a little un easy with the circuit. he's never had any issues in the past so do you think all will be good to just put a 2.5mm 3pin plug on the new hob he gets and plugging it in to the existing socket. I know i should have 4 or even 6mm hard wired to an isolated switch but there isn't one present. god knows why. any feed back will be much appreciated thank you

andy

 

[telectrix]

if the new hob comes with a fitted plug, then you can plug it in. however, you'll most likely find that it will require a dedicated 32A supply ( 6mm on a 32A breaker with a local isolater into a cooker connection unit is the norm unless cable is smothered in insulation, whereby a 10mm cable may be required ). read and take heed of manufacturer's instructions. happy days.

 

[kingeri]

Do you mean that the plug has 2.5mm twin and earth going into it, or that the circuit is wired in 2.5mm?

 

[Octopus]

It's not unusual for older properties to have a single socket circuit.

As for the hob, what do the manufacturers installation instructions say?

 

[sparky1508]

How many cables are at the CU end. If it's 2 or even 3 circuits sharing a circuit breaker you could separate them given you have spare ways. Also would need to check if sockets are ring final or radial and it all depends on the power rating I the hob as to how it can be fitted.

Sent from my SM-G361F using Tapatalk

 

[SJD]

To add to the above, check exactly what cables are present in the consumer unit / fuse box.

It would be unusual not to install a cooker circuit, e.g. on 6mm (or even 10mm) cable, but sometimes a kitchen layout gets altered, said cooker circuit is in the wrong location, and one possibility is that instead of relocating / rewiring it, the socket circuit was added to instead. If this is the case, the cable might just be pushed to the back of the consumer unit / fuse board (safely terminated, of course).