Ok I'm not a practising sparky but I'm not a clueless diy'er either. Please don't start dissecting me..
We have got a couple of barn conversions to holiday lets happening at the moment. One is a single barn that has been designed so it can be let out as one single house or two mini house. Two kitchens etc but no major electrical loads.
I won't bore you with the details but for simplicity rather than being fed from the existing 3 phase distribution at the farm, the house is on it's own supply from dno with a 83a cutout.
The design was each house will have a CU. One CU is fed from the cutout, the other CU will be fed from the first. Conduits have been laid to allow a second dno supply to be brought in in the future if it is ever sold off.
The cable run between the two buildings is about 8m and is embedded in the wooden studwork, certainly got no mechanical protection.
The plan in my head was a largish CU would go in the house with the meter, 100a isolator, 50a mcb for the submain, and then standard split rcd for the house. Secondary house would just have a normal twin rcd board. Submain would be three core swa. All fine up until this point.. bear with me.
The sparky doing the work (subcontracted by builder) has bunged a 16mm split concentric in to join the two buildings and he's not exactly routed it in a way where it would be protected (runs up the stairwell wall just behind the plaster and then back down the other side).
The builder has asked him what the thinking behind the split con was and why he used it compared to swa. He's being pretty illusive with the answer, but says he does not intend on putting it on the RCD side of the board (for obvious reasons) and swears split con is fine and "is in the regs" and "I use it all the time".
I'm very uncomfortable with it given it's routing.
So am I overreacting to be deeply suspicious of the whole thing. Over to you...
We have got a couple of barn conversions to holiday lets happening at the moment. One is a single barn that has been designed so it can be let out as one single house or two mini house. Two kitchens etc but no major electrical loads.
I won't bore you with the details but for simplicity rather than being fed from the existing 3 phase distribution at the farm, the house is on it's own supply from dno with a 83a cutout.
The design was each house will have a CU. One CU is fed from the cutout, the other CU will be fed from the first. Conduits have been laid to allow a second dno supply to be brought in in the future if it is ever sold off.
The cable run between the two buildings is about 8m and is embedded in the wooden studwork, certainly got no mechanical protection.
The plan in my head was a largish CU would go in the house with the meter, 100a isolator, 50a mcb for the submain, and then standard split rcd for the house. Secondary house would just have a normal twin rcd board. Submain would be three core swa. All fine up until this point.. bear with me.
The sparky doing the work (subcontracted by builder) has bunged a 16mm split concentric in to join the two buildings and he's not exactly routed it in a way where it would be protected (runs up the stairwell wall just behind the plaster and then back down the other side).
The builder has asked him what the thinking behind the split con was and why he used it compared to swa. He's being pretty illusive with the answer, but says he does not intend on putting it on the RCD side of the board (for obvious reasons) and swears split con is fine and "is in the regs" and "I use it all the time".
I'm very uncomfortable with it given it's routing.
So am I overreacting to be deeply suspicious of the whole thing. Over to you...
