Wiring in an oven

[tek-monkey]

Back again!

The pipe is gone, so thought I'd revisit the cooker. Well, GF has no way to cook til I do! She has a new hob too, a halogen one. No probs thinks I, we'll just stick a plug on it. Trips out when you turn it on., even if plugged into the socket controlled by the big red oven switch. Got a bit confused, then realised a halogen hob is 5.8Kw! So I'm guessing both need hard wiring to the 30a socket, but if it trips it on a plug will that not still trip it when its wired in? Surely the power available is still the same, barring the resistance from the actual plug?

I dunno, out of my depth now. Not being qualified means I couldn't hard wire it anyway, but anyone got any thoughts? Gonna be a week or two til funds allow a sparky unfortunately, luckily I'd got her a halogen oven for christmas so she got that early!

 

[Gramaisc]

If you're going to supply the hob and the oven from the same point, then you could have a requirement for about 11kW, if everything was on at the same time. When you say it 'trips out', was that at the fuse-board? If it was plugged in, then, presumably, there was a 13A fuse in the way - I'm surprised that survived.

 

[wmrcomputers]

I agree with Gramaisc, the 13A fuse should have gone really and not the trip.
(EDIT:- Is there some kind of limiter to the mains socket on cooker boxes?? If so maybe that sent the signal for the consumer unit to trip out. I've never looked inside one to know.)

Also, you say that "not being qualified" you couldn't hardwire it yourself anyway. Just to let you know that IIRC you can legally do any wiring after the trip board yourself, as long as you are competent that you know what you are doing. Legally speaking a home owner can hardwire new sockets in or anything. There would probably be a legal obligation to have it all tested by a qualified electrician if you were to put the house on the market I'd imagine though.

 

[Gramaisc]

If the circuit breaker is particularly fast then it might beat the fuse.

I believe that you are theoretically not allowed to do electrical work in a kitchen or bathroom situation now, without some sort of 'qualification', but I can't provide evidence to support that belief..

 

[wmrcomputers]

Times may have changed then so I stand corrected (although nothing would stop me from going ahead and wiring into the wall point for the cooker anyway - it's too simple to be paying a fortune out to someone else - lol)

Also IIRC, Rikki informed me that when he swapped the gas flexi-hose over from my old cooker to my new one that legally there wasn't anything stopping me from doing that myself... as long as it didn't involve messing with the fixed gas pipe down the wall.

I'm pretty sure you can still legally wire the cooker cable into the wall point though. Do we not have any electricians on the forum to confirm this one way or the other?

 

[Gramaisc]

Electrical Safety Council explains the recent changes...

Connecting the oven and hob to the existing point is probably outside the restrictions, but the work required to produce an adequate supply for them both seems unlikely to be.