Kitchen electrical work - are naked cables ok or not?

[FreshHomeOwner]

As someone doing a kitchen refurbishment project for the first time (and now having learnt the hard way why you should never leave your kitchen fitter in charge of sourcing the electrician), I was a bit surprised about the state the electrical works were left in and just figured I'd check here if this is acceptable or breaks some obvious regulations.

In short, where the old wires in the wall were all running through metal conduits, the electrician left the new ones for me to fill in. (see images) It does looks like somewhat bad practice to me, but perhaps not strictly against any regulations, and as long as I get the certificate from the NICEIC and have it verified to guard me against future inspection failures I am kind of ok with patching it up, tiling over and assuming no one will ever try to drill into the kitchen tiles without turning power off at the mains. But I just want to know there's no obvious regulations broken by not having any housing for them?

 

[Midwest]

Domestic. Old installs from the 60's would have been in metal, but light gauge round plastic conduit generally...although sometimes oval.

You must have to use a fair bit of 25mm for some drops, again just curious?

 

[David M]

I do quite a lot of kitchen fitting, and being multi skilled I do the complete job including first fix electrics & pluming, plastering, tiling and installing the kitchen. In fact I got into this because I was fed up of following other trades and having to deal with one problem after another.

A good tradesman (in my opinion) will consider the whole job. In that he/she will take into account what other items need addressing and how they will be installed.
As an electrician or plumber it is your responsibility to ensure that cables, pipes and accessories are installed with consideration to the customers requirements and also importantly the installation of the kitchen.

I have seen many occasions where a cable run has been installed directly where a kitchen unit is most likely to have the mounting plates installed. The kitchen fitter gets the blame for drilling the cable, when in some cases it is a partial blame situation. Its not rocket science, it takes ten minutes to mark out on the walls where units are likely to be fixed in place. Or failing that get the installer to do it so those areas can be avoided where possible.

My point being, yes its not good practice to just leave the cables un-capped, but capping offers little protection against a drill bit. It is far worse practice to not consider the whole install. Too many folk go in there do their bit and walk away with no concern for the next person to follow.

 

[dnjr]

I'm interested in knowing why some feel it's bad practice to not use capping? Surely it's a case of horses for courses, but not using it doesn't necessarily mean bad practice. It's easy enough to stick capping on a wall which hasn't been finished (example breezeblock on a new build), but in a chase of an old terraced house with 107 coats of different plaster and the brick course put in by Stevie Wonder installing capping is usually a lot more trouble than it's worth.

When you want to keep chases narrow and clean, I find that clipping is a lot neater and easier - the cables aren't likely to be damaged by the plasterer in a narrow chase. Granted, you can't say that was a narrow chase in the OPs case but that wall looks like all sorts of hell - to me if you tried to install capping on that it would look like the Ultimate roller coaster at Light Water Valley.

To say not using capping is always bad practice is just wrong in my opinion though.

Hi Hightower. Would have thought oval conduit for a chase would be the best option. Nice and neat any easy to replace cables if needs be in the future.

 

[rad1o]

We had a kitchen installed together with an extension that involved a good part of the rest of the house incl. electrics.
We changed from gas to eletric / induction hob and opted to not have those UGLY cooker switches in the kitchen at all. Both hob and cooker are separately fused on whatever was stipulated anyway. So if any work needs to be done I would always switch off the whole circuit at fuse board level anyway rather than just the switch.

 

[Risteard]

You must have to use a fair bit of 25mm for some drops, again just curious?

For domestic conduit drops 20mm is pretty much always adequate.

 

[Deleted member 26818]

I worked on one kitchen install, where the designer wanted the sockets and switches precisely posisitioned to allow for the surrounding tiling to line up, so the lines between the tiles would line up with the center of each accessory both horizontally and vertically.
The wall was concrete and we running singles in conduit.
After all the chases were completed, the wall looked like a tube map.

 

[Midwest]

For domestic conduit drops 20mm is pretty much always adequate.

I was kinda thinking cookers, 3 gang switches etc.

 

[Midwest]

I have seen many occasions where a cable run has been installed directly where a kitchen unit is most likely to have the mounting plates installed. The kitchen fitter gets the blame for drilling the cable, when in some cases it is a partial blame situation. Its not rocket science, it takes ten minutes to mark out on the walls where units are likely to be fixed in place. Or failing that get the installer to do it so those areas can be avoided where possible.

QUOTE]

The kitchen fitters I do work for, draw some lovely lines on the walls, where all the wall and floor units are going, so I don't put my drops directly where they need to put their fixings.

Bloody nice blokes

 

[Risteard]

I was kinda thinking cookers, 3 gang switches etc.

3 -gang switch could use two drops. 6mm^2 for cooker fits within 20mm at a push.

 

[Leesparkykent]

I was brought up on oval for chases and capping for bare brick.

 

[123]

I was kinda thinking cookers, 3 gang switches etc.

If needed a 2nd conduit drop is used - 3 gang switches 1 drop is generally more than enough as we use PVC/PVC Singles, PVC/PVC Singles & Earth as well as Twin & Earth. Oh and Twin Brown for strappers lol.

 

[Midwest]

If needed a 2nd conduit drop is used - 3 gang switches 1 drop is generally more than enough as we use PVC/PVC Singles, PVC/PVC Singles & Earth as well as Twin & Earth. Oh and Twin Brown for strappers lol.

Blimey, almost a different world. When using singles, is that used through the rest of the property, or do you use a combination of singles and tw&e? Wot about larger cables 6&10mm? (see Risteard kinda answered the last).