Downstairs sockets

[eddieboy]

The house I recently purchased has got the downstairs s/o on one circuit. There are 4 in the kitchen and 4 in the lounge. Does the kitchen need to be a seperate circuit? To me it seems daft just having 4 s/o on one circuit.:rolleyes2:

 

[Lighthouse Phil]

A Irish friend of mine from Eire, tells me that they are only permitted to use ring final circuits, though don't quote me on this, as my friend is a joiner and has only observed sparkys using this practise, over there...

I'd say that ruling was some time ago.
We're working from ETCI rulings from July 2011 at the moment.
An odd one here up to recently was that every house had to have at least 1 ring

 

[Engineer54]

Not 100% sure why they changed the rules on kitchen wiring. Tech Council say it was to give more power to kitchen areas but I never had a problem, I'm sure most other sparks didn't either.
When I was wiring kitchens, it was always a 32A Ring, and sometimes (depending on size / diversity) I'd put in a 15A radial for the oven.
Rings are permissable elsewhere in the building.

Just seems to me they are playing around with the current UK Reg's trying to put their own stamp on it without any good reason to do so!!... Surely it's down to the electrical designer what requirements a particular kitchen needs??

If they were that concerned, they could have just stated ''minimum of 2 power circuits required within kitchen areas''!! At least that would give the designer a bit of room to maneuver, by having 1 x ring and 1 x radial, 2 rings, 2 x radials!!