armoured cabling karen

[karen1965]

Hi, i am using armoured cabling from fuse box in house to a workshop at end of garden. 40 meters away. a garage consumer fuse box unit will be used. This will supply wall plug sockets and lighting. Out door plug sockets will also be put outside the building to run a pond that is about 30 meters back towards the house. Should I use 4mm armoured cabling from house to workshop? Also do Ineed to use 4mm armoured cabling from outdoor plug sockets to pond. Or can I use.1.5 armoured cabling. Thanks for any help anyone can give.

 

[Leesparkykent]

Hi, have you done any cable calculations? Is there any extraneous conductive parts in the garage? What's the earthing arrangement?

 

[karen1965]

I am very sorry but I can not answer these questions. It is because an electrician who is a friend is saying different to another friend who is an electrician. We are now very confused and do not know who to believe. We feel that the 4mm armoured cabling is correct as he told us that due to the cabling being so far from house that the voltage would drop. So he suggested 4mm. What do you mean by extraneous conductive parts in the garage? The armoured cabling is going into main house fuse box. I wish I could be more helpful. Thankyou so much for replying to me.

 

[D Skelton]

I have no information to hand so therefore cannot carry out any calculations, however the likelyhood of 4mm cable being large enough to cope with the voltage drop over 40m is slim to none bearing in mind what the cable is likely to feed.

Ask for your electrician/s to put their calculations to you in writing and then submit them here.

It's likely that neither of them know what they're on about.

 

[Leesparkykent]

There is a few things that needs to taken into account when selecting this cable.

The definition of an extraneous-conductive-part is “a conductive part liable to introduce a potential, generally earth potential, and not forming part of the electrical installation”. For example a water supply that enters the building in a metallic pipe or structural steel etc.

 

[karen1965]

We are having 3 wall double sockets and 2 ceiling lights. No water will be entering the workshop at the end of garden. The sockets will be powering work tools like drills and may be a chest freezer. The cable that we were getting was 3 core cable 4mm with a little 2 above it. Do you feel we need 6mm armoured cabling.

 

[karen1965]

Sorry forgot about out door power points too. for uv pond filter, water fall pump and garden lights

 

[D Skelton]

The installation needs to be properly designed before just slinging in any old cable.

From what you're now saying 4mm may well be fine, but it may need to be bigger. Just burying a cable and hoping isn't the way to go about this. The electrician doing the work needs to at least be able to design the installation and correctly calculate the size of the cable taking into account things such as voltage drop, current carrying capacity, ground temperature etc... This is bread and butter stuff for any electrician worth his salt, so, like I said, without all the information available to us, we can't really comment.

Get your electrician/s to put their calculations in writing to you, and put it up on here.

 

[IzzyS]

The installation needs to be properly designed before just slinging in any old cable.

From what you're now saying 4mm may well be fine, but it may need to be bigger. Just burying a cable and hoping isn't the way to go about this. The electrician doing the work needs to at least be able to design the installation and correctly calculate the size of the cable taking into account things such as voltage drop, current carrying capacity, ground temperature etc... This is bread and butter stuff for any electrician worth his salt, so, like I said, without all the information available to us, we can't really comment.

Get your electrician/s to put their calculations in writing to you, and put it up on here.

Like most of the members on here, I do this sort of stuff all the time and as far as I'm aware none of my customers feel the need to post on the internet to see if I'm doing it properly.

As Mr Skelton says, it's nothing complicated for an experienced spark. Rather than the original poster asking for a design check from total strangers, they would be better off checking the qualifications / experience / references of the electrician(s) they are thinking of engaging.

 

[Guest77]

Hi, i am using armoured cabling from fuse box in house to a workshop at end of garden. 40 meters away. a garage consumer fuse box unit will be used. This will supply wall plug sockets and lighting. Out door plug sockets will also be put outside the building to run a pond that is about 30 meters back towards the house. Should I use 4mm armoured cabling from house to workshop? Also do Ineed to use 4mm armoured cabling from outdoor plug sockets to pond. Or can I use.1.5 armoured cabling. Thanks for any help anyone can give.

Post reported.

 

[Paul.M]

Post reported.

Thank you Mike. We saw this thread straight away and let it run in the General section/domestic due to a customer asking for advice on an electrician etc etc etc.

Great advice above, we need to know the full story. A 40m run in 1.5mm or 4mm sounds like penny pinching to me, just buy 10mm SWA and cover for any further add on's in the years to come. A lot more information is required before any member can give a true answer, hope the OP gets back to us with some more? OR the Electrician joins up and can answer a few questions? I hope it is the latter.



Thread continues.................

 

[GMES]

Agree with above comments, this isn't an hard job for a competent Electrician to sort.

 

[tigerpaul]

If the electrician exists at all...

 

[Darkwood]

Note to Karen ... if you are taking advice from so called Electricians you know and they have not come to your house to assess the requirements of the install then they cannot know what is required and anything you are told is worthless information.

As has already been pointed out - this isn't a hard set-up to work out but as you cannot provide the required information yourself then a visit is the only way you can get correct advice .... I would hazard a guess that 4mm is too small though, I suggest you post your location and a member may be close or a recognised local company and you stop using idiot freinds who are giving you what could be misleading advice because they probably do not know what they are doing.

 

[andyb]

Karen, as Darkwood says and others have alluded to, the answer to your question is ''I need to come and have a look'
If neither of your 'electrician friends' has replied as such then you need to get an electrician in.

Again, as Darkwood says 4mm seems small to me for a 40m run supplying a lighting circuit.