Wiring a shed

Gyck

Hi,

I'm thinking about running electricity out to my shed, which is about 10 meters from the house. I was planning to take the feed from a socket in a room at the back of the house and run a buried armored cable out to the shed. I won't be doing much heavy work there, I only need a light plus one or two sockets to power a drill etc.

Now, I'm wondering if:
1. is this safe
2. should there be some form of circuit breaker protection, or can I rely on the fusing on the circuit its coming from?

Any advice welcome.

AdrianR

I was planning to take the feed from a socket in a room at the back of the house and run a buried armored cable out to the shed. I won't be doing much heavy work there, I only need a light plus one or two sockets to power a drill etc.

I wouldn't advise doing this unless you just wanted a light then I'd advise bringing it out via a fuse spur from the plug. You could be overloading the existing socket.

If you want to do it correctly, bring it out from the fuse board via a 16A MCB (Or whatever they use nowadays) run the cable to the shed and then re distribute via 10A protection for the light and 16A for the plugs. This may seem like overkill but the protection shouldn't be too far away.

Up to you but it's not something I would take shortcuts with. Get advice from a qualified electrician to be on the safe side, even if you do end up doing it yourself.

Alun

I did exactly that, although I already had the wiring in place to an old shed which I demolished and put a new workshop in it's place. I also used a 6A MCB for the lights, which was the smallest I could get IIRC. You can get a mini-consumer unit box that will take the two MCB's and an RCBO (a combined MCB and RCD (earth leakage)). See the picture below ...

Gyck

Thanks for the feedback.

Assuming I don't bring it from the exisiting fuseboard could I fit an MCB and RCD at the shed end? Alun, where did you source the RCBO?

ismynametoolong

I bought a 40 A 30Ma Rcbo from deminse elec in Tallaght yesterday for
a new Elec shower and they come in various ratings .

Alun

I got the whole lot including the conduit and accessories, all the wiring, sockets, switches etc. from O'Reilly's, an electrical wholesaler who will happily sell to the public. I've got one locally in Bray, but they're in other places too, I think. Don't, whatever you do, buy the stuff at a DIY store like B&Q, you'll get fleeced big time. The RCBO is from ABB, it's a DS 651. It's the big ganged breaker on the right hand side, the other two to the left are the 6A and 16A MCB's.

I'm not sure what the regulations are concerning taking a spur off an existing socket, but I'm pretty sure it's either against regulations or if not, then frowned upon. As I said I was lucky in that I already had the connection to my consumer unit, but if I hadn't I'd have got an electrician to do at least that bit ... I really don't fancy blowing a main ESB fuse

FillSpectre

I am no electrician but the fuse/mcb should be back at the board incase the wiring gets damaged. Secondly the conduit or wire should be safety standard to avoid damage such as pest and machinery like lawn mowers. Belts and braces approach. Just my view too

Gyck

Thanks again, food for thought!

Regards,
Kevin

Alun

FillSpectre wrote:

I am no electrician but the fuse/mcb should be back at the board incase the wiring gets damaged. Secondly the conduit or wire should be safety standard to avoid damage such as pest and machinery like lawn mowers. Belts and braces approach. Just my view too

I'm no electrican either, but like you say, as far as I know the mcb in the main fusebox is to protect the wiring between the fusebox and the shed. The mcb's and rcbo in the shed are to protect the wiring in the shed itself.

FX Meister

Taking it from the socket should be fine. Use 2.5 SWA cable and no smaller. You can wire the lighting circuit in 2.5 in the shed also if you don't want to fuse it down if using a smaller cable. You can always buy a socket with a built in RCD instead of going down the route of an RCD and breaker or RCBO.