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Originally Posted by Less
Security lighting should be hard wired through a fused spur (preferably switched), taken from your ring main. Up to the spur the cable should be 2.5 mm twin & earth cable. After the spur and feeding the light the cable should be 1.5mm twin & earth.
Twin and earth cable should not, must not, be wired into a 13 amp plug! A 13 amp plug is designed to be used with flexible cable.
For your own and your families safety I will repeat:-
Get a qualified electrician to install the security light. |
Nice to see that someone knows what they're talking about Although 1mm twin and earth would do for 500 watt. There are other ways, you could connect it to an existing lighting circuit, but you'd have to know its existing load its about 1200 watt on 5 amp but thats changed now its 230v, you could feed it back to the fuse box and put it on a new trip. I'd put it on a plug and have done, because that was the easiest way and cheapest, the alternative would be too costly to have been done. done right its nearly as safe as it being fixed, the weak point being the plug of course. With all that taking it out and putting it in things become loose. If you've got a plug that runs hot it needs changing straight away, its faulty, I've just changed one, the fuse in the plug was loose in its socket, it over heated, melted the plug, the brass pin, and the insides of the socket, I changed the lot and its fine now. The main reason for doing it yourself with a plug is of course your not supposed to do it the fixed way yourself , Electrical wiring is now covered by part p of the building regs, which means most work other than simple socket replacements and lampholder replacements require that the person doing the work is part p registered. All bathroom and kitchen work must be done by a person who is part p registered. which is basically another way of the government getting more money out of us. I'm not part p registered at the moment, I only did weekend electrics, I drive in the week 1500 miles a week so no time, based on that i cant justify paying the registration fee, although i hear most of the cowboys are now part p registered while most of the weekend sparkies, the old boys who did jobs cheap for granmas have given up.