Weird electrical consumer unit labeling

jez9999

jez9999

jez9999

Associate
Joined
30 Nov 2010
Posts
37
Location
Northampton
I just gave a rudimentary test to my consumer unit circuits (I bought this as a new build 6 years ago, electrics certified and everything) and I was... surprised at the labeling. The "Kitchen sockets" breaker controls the sockets in the kitchen, but also those in upstairs bedrooms 2 & 4. The "First floor sockets" breaker controls the sockets in the upstairs landing, upstairs bedrooms 1 & 3, but also those in the lounge (ground floor!)

Is this somehow normal, especially in a new build house? Seems like the sockets are arranged in more of a "left side of house" / "right side of house" configuration.
 
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Its normal on all UK houses to have ring mains arranged that way to distribute load. The labels come with the consumer unit and that's all most sparkies use - they choose the most appropriate one and that's it. Some builders (ours) will stick a written list of what's actually connected to each RCBO on the inside of the switch cover but most won't.
 
I thought it was common to split them across RCD so that is one guess some lights and sockets still work on each floor.
I did mine differently and did each floor on its own, same with lights. Kitchen on its own and garage on its own. I regret doing rings rather than radial.

Documented mine with accurate labels and also in a spreadsheet with wire sizes and what not.
 
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jez9999 said:
Wow that seems rather lazy. Why bother with the labels?
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Most likely because not labelling the CU at all would have got noticed and flagged up. But not one would have checked carefully enought to make sure it's correct.

It's also possible, because new houses are wired in two stages, the CU wasn't installed by the same company who did the actual wiring. You've think they'd have noticed at the testing phase but stranger things have happened. Unfortunately, house builders are always looking to save money, so often corners are cut and work gets rushed.
 
robj20 said:
I thought it was common to split them across RCD so that is one guess
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It was/is more a case that (for example) you can't put kitchen + living room on the same ring mains because the load may be too much.

For most of the last 50 years on 4 bed new-build houses you probably had a double socket and not much more in the third bedroom/boxroom so its not unusual to have that on a "downstairs" circuit. Another is the landing socket which is pretty much guaranteed to be wired into the same circuit as the sockets at the side of the staircase or hall.
 
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Simply put, don't trust any circuit labelling in the consumer unit and test the circuit before working on it. Every time. That way you can be healthily surprised if it's correct and not surprisingly dead if it it's wrong.

We've lived in this house for almost seven years and I still come across electrical bodges that either a dubiously qualified electrician or ignorant diy'er thought was acceptable. Today's example - I wanted to simply replace a faulty double gang socket but when I took the old one off I found 5 twin & earth cables wired to the old socket. That's 5 live wires (2x2.5mm & 3x1.5m) rammed in to a terminal designed for either 3x2.5mm or 2x4mm wires. Impressive that they actually managed to get the wires in each terminal but what was less impressive was the fact they'd spurred two unfused radials and a lighting circuit (two ceiling lights) from a final ring.
 
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