- Joined
- Sep 18, 2012
- Messages
- 6
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Hello folks,
Had a call from a very elderly lady last week on account of her bathroom fan heater packing up. Upon inspection I found that the plastic pullcord switch mechanism had deformed and finally snapped through years of use....as they do. Designed to fail by my reckoning. OK,so just replace it right? I'm not sure it's that straightforward in this case.
The existing heater isn't rated for use in zone 2,but that's exactly where it is. An IPX4 heater would resolve that. The headache is the flush mounted unswitched fused spur with flex outlet that's also in zone 2 and is even closer to the the shower enclosure than the heater. My gut feeling is that somebody installed the shower and consequently put the heater and spur in zone. The issue of the fused spur outlet in zone 2 remains the grey area to me. It doesn't incorporate a switch but is clearly not splashproof. It is taken from a 30mA RCD protected socket ring circuit,which is obviously good,but if I'm doing a minor works and taking responsibility for it,it's got to be right.
Short of going surface-mount-tastic at the nearest socket outside of the bathroom (walls sadly not stud) and bringing a new spur in out of zone,has anybody got another spin on this one? I just want to put a fan heater in,preferably without too much mucking about,and in a state of compliance. If I can somehow make the existing spur outlet comply in situ or install an IPX4 alternative,it would really reduce time and cost. It's going to be hard to justify more cost to an elderly lady living on a tight budget.
Any takes on this please?
Cheers :wink5:
Had a call from a very elderly lady last week on account of her bathroom fan heater packing up. Upon inspection I found that the plastic pullcord switch mechanism had deformed and finally snapped through years of use....as they do. Designed to fail by my reckoning. OK,so just replace it right? I'm not sure it's that straightforward in this case.
The existing heater isn't rated for use in zone 2,but that's exactly where it is. An IPX4 heater would resolve that. The headache is the flush mounted unswitched fused spur with flex outlet that's also in zone 2 and is even closer to the the shower enclosure than the heater. My gut feeling is that somebody installed the shower and consequently put the heater and spur in zone. The issue of the fused spur outlet in zone 2 remains the grey area to me. It doesn't incorporate a switch but is clearly not splashproof. It is taken from a 30mA RCD protected socket ring circuit,which is obviously good,but if I'm doing a minor works and taking responsibility for it,it's got to be right.
Short of going surface-mount-tastic at the nearest socket outside of the bathroom (walls sadly not stud) and bringing a new spur in out of zone,has anybody got another spin on this one? I just want to put a fan heater in,preferably without too much mucking about,and in a state of compliance. If I can somehow make the existing spur outlet comply in situ or install an IPX4 alternative,it would really reduce time and cost. It's going to be hard to justify more cost to an elderly lady living on a tight budget.
Any takes on this please?
Cheers :wink5: