Electric socket wiring

Mynight said:

Ergh I read it as he was moving the lot vertically not creating a spur .

In which case no.

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I think you're right, he does just want to move it. Beer monster suggested a spur.

thenewoc said:

Surely what you have at the moment is a socket which has another socket spurred off it somewhere, hence the third connection to each terminal. You're not meant to have more than one socket spurred, not without a fused spur anyway. Therefore I don't think you can just put a junction box in there and run a second spur to the tv above as I believe that wouldn't be in regs.

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Participant said:

This is what I was going to say, you can't spur off that without a FCU.

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Whilst it is considered a bit of a bodge you can technically have 2 spurs coming off the same outlet on a ring, what you can't have is more than one outlet on each of those spurs without fusing down.
Whether you can physically get 4x2.5mm in the terminals is another matter although I have seen 5x crammed in to at least one socket somehow.
Good old kitchen fitters

Thanks for the help everyone.

mynight said:

Ergh I read it as he was moving the lot vertically not creating a spur

Click to expand...

Essentially, yes. There isnt enough free cable to simply move it though so I needed some sort of connection + addition of some new cabling.

Here is a quick diagram of what I think I need to do:


The black lines are the existing cables and the red lines are new cables i'll put in to wire it inline with the ring. Does this look correct?

I've got a couple of tv's done on the wall and both also have a socket at the lower level. Personally I think it would be better to retain the position of the original socket as it serves the purpose for any set top box or games console etc. I then put in a brush plate socket behind the tv and at the lower level to pass either a aerial lead or hdmi lead between the two positions.

It would be neater imo to find the socket that only has a single cable coming into it and see whether that spur could be done properly or whether you could live without it. That way you could then join one of the ring cables in the pattress with a new cable going to the socket above and bring a new cable back down to this original socket. The lower socket (excluding the spur) would then only have two cables attached and one joined that doesn't interact with the lower socket as it's feeding the socket above. Obviously if you can sort out the spur you can remove that cable from this lower socket then. Advantage would be only requiring one join that would be accessible in the pattress and you'd gain an extra socket. It would also be better in terms of what's been done to the house so that anyone in the future doesn't spur off of a socket that has a hidden spur via a junction box.

How I did mine. http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=28360182&postcount=4

Sorry, I didn't suggest a spur, I suggesting keeping the spur and extending the ring main.

Essentially what tough has made in his diagram.

touch said:

Thanks for the help everyone.


Essentially, yes. There isnt enough free cable to simply move it though so I needed some sort of connection + addition of some new cabling.

Here is a quick diagram of what I think I need to do:

The black lines are the existing cables and the red lines are new cables i'll put in to wire it inline with the ring. Does this look correct?

Click to expand...

Yeah that'll be fine . Sorry I got confused then.

Personally I'd still use the crimps and heat shrink but there's no reason not to use wagos now they've got the classification. Haven't entered the world of wagos myself yet as I've still got a few thousand crimps to get through .

Must admit, I've never used Wago's and prefer the old school crimps.

wagos the best things known to man lol when they first came out i thought hmm cant beat a crimp.
But they make 2nd fix so much quicker especially if you have a boat load of cables in a rb4.
But if extending a ring behind face plates etc i always use crimps can get cables organized better behind.

I think I'm being thick here but "rb4"? and why would you use crimps in a second fix?

We not talking domestic?

I've never heard of an RB4. But piqued my interest so researched it a bit.



I guess I'm old school and prefer to use calibrated Crimpers.

Thats a junction box . Doesnt need any other name .

Update: it's done. Thanks for the help everyone.
It turned out that the extra connection was a spur which went up the wall so that made things easier. I just had to extend the 2 ring connections to move the socket higher and reconnect the spur from the new location. Essentially, exactly the same configuration as before but with a little extension added.


(Ignore the wet paint around the old socket location and missing skirt )

edit: i used wago 222 series connectors for joining the cables. Brilliant things, easy to use and make a good solid connection.

TV looks a bit lost on that wall, maybe you need a larger one