I was called out yesterday to a house to have a look at a wall mounted heater in a bedroom that had stopped working. Had a quick look, and noticed that the heater was controlled by a 20A DP switch. No FCU. In the CU, it was on a 32A MCB. Upon further investigation, I found that there were two 3kw heaters on this circuit. Basically, the 10mm^2 shower circuit had been repurposed to supply these heaters. Nothing unusual about that but the way it was done was a bit rough (in my view). The 10mm^2 cable was terminated into a cooker outlet plate, then 2 x 2.5mm^2 cables came out of this plate, immediately into 2 x unswitched FCUs, then onto the heaters which had local 20A DP switches. I fixed her problem by simply replacing a fuse. But it got me thinking how I would have done this job and if the current situation is acceptable. The connections in the cooker outlet were sound, no cable can be overloaded, so at the time I couldn't immediately fault it. I suppose the cooker outlet wasn't designed for the purpose it is being used for. If I were doing this I would probably just stick a small 2 way CU with 2x 16A MCBs in it on the end of the 10mm^2, or find a more suitable way of joining the cables.
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
) how one could draw a current that would overload the 2.5 ?
