Wilson's Workshop Waffle

[awemawson]

Rob, one of the best decisions I took setting out my workshop was to run 100 x 50 trunking round all the walls - makes wiring installation and later inevitable changes a breeze

[RobWilson]

Rob, one of the best decisions I took setting out my workshop was to run 100 x 50 trunking round all the walls - makes wiring installation and later inevitable changes a breeze

I am still pondering how to run the cables  Andrew   , Did you go plastic or steel trunking ? 

I have about 70 meters of 2.5mm 4 core SY cable that I will be using ,,,,,,,,,,,,, , Just because I got it free  .

Rob

[Will_D]

Ah So Grasshopper, No wonder your shop looks so tidy!

Can you please post the link to the "Feng Shui  Meter" - its one piece of test equipment I don't have!

I have heard that some wives have some sort of ability in this area

[awemawson]

Rob, at the time I couldn't find steel trunking at a sensible price that was rectangular rather than square - and a 4" square is too far off the wall in many cases, so I went with plastic:


https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Main_Index/Trunking_Pvc_Index/Maxi_42/index.html

[Spurry]

Have to agree with Andrew about the trunking idea. I used 50x50 which is adequate for my smaller needs. Pic shows job half-way through.
Pete

[RobWilson]

Hi Andrew ,Pete

Well I have had a ponder on the use of trunking and its not going to happen , I would need way  to many bends   . So I may just get a few lengths of cable tray , mmm still pondering 

Cheers ,Rob

[jb3cx]

Evening rob ,don't know the legal side of this ,anyway for what it's worth ,one of my mates came around this afternoon,he had a visit from an electrical inspector from the local council thismorning ,
He basically condemned the ring main in his workshop,what he said was that all electrical cables from the floor up to a certain height had to be in conduit.the reason being that if any metal fell on the cable and damaged it ,it would then be live ,that's the reason he gave him ,
He said it would take about 3 to 4 weeks before his report would be acted upon ,then they would send someone out to see if he had put in the conduit,if he doesn't comply they will cut off his supply to the workshop ,then he would have to get some sort of certificate before they would reconnect the power to his workshop.one of the other things the guy pointed out to him was that if he had a fire and put in a claim to his insurance company,it could be void if he hadn't complied with local building regs .
Hope this helps to make your mind up .

[hermetic]

Hi Rob and all! I have been pondering the self same question, as am about half way through taking all the wiring out of my ceilings so I can insulate and board them, and not need to be in to make the inevitable additions. What I am going to do is dry line and insulate the walls in the workshop with 1" x 2" treated timber, and 2" of jablite, and I shall have a 3" deep trunking round the walls at ceiling level with seperate narrow covers on, but constructed with timber as part of the dry lining process. I will then drop out of the edge of the extra inch with 20mm black pvc conduit.

JB3CX, where are you in the world, it is not like council inspectors to pop round unannounced or uninvited. Having said that, it makes perfect sense, to protect cables which are in the working area, and PVC conduit looks good, and is easy to fix, and quite cheap.
Phil

[Pete W.]

Hi there, Phil,

Before you pay out on your insulation, I suggest that you research the relative flammabilities of Jablite vs Kingspan/Cellotex.

Jablite is, as far as I know, a trade name for polystyrene foam.  I remember that, at one time, there was a fashion for applying expanded polystyrene tiles to ceilings.  That practice fell out of fashion when it became evident that, in the event of a fire, the tiles melted and took light and dropped burning molten polystyrene on to whatever was below!

I'm not saying that Kingspan/Cellotex insulation is fireproof - I'm just recommending you to research the matter and to make an informed decision. 

[awemawson]

Also polystyrene in contact with pvc insulation has a long term reaction. It came to light when people laid insulation in lofts on top of existing cables - the two bond together so one or the other is dissolving the other or one 

[appletree]

Its called polymer migration, sometimes new electrical items suffer from it when packed in polystyrene. When Polystyrene ceiling tiles were all the rage people were injured having painted them with gloss paint which caused a melt down.

Phil

[RobWilson]

Afternoon Chaps 

It would have been nice to run conduit but it is not so practical in my workshop  so  I have decided that I  will just  run the cables around the workshop at ceiling height (above the wall cabinets)   as I dont have much option and then drop the cable  down to each machine  .

I will be securing the   cables with Bluetack ,gaffa tape and tacks  , any venerable areas I will make sure the insulation is bared back  .

Rob

[John Rudd]

Do you mean 'vulnerable' ?

"Bluetack"?...... Thought you would have made some sky hooks for it to hang from?

[RobWilson]

Do you mean 'vulnerable' ?

"Bluetack"?...... Thought you would have made some sky hooks for it to hang from?

  Aye that what I meant    ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,   

Sky hooks are so last year mate , Blu tack is the in thing 


Rob

[Manxmodder]

 I will be securing the   cables with Bluetack ,gaffa tape and tacks

Well,if you're nailing the cables to the wall be sure to place the tacks right in the centre of the cable. That way you can be certain the protruding head of the tacks are adequately earthed...I'm sure the Council building bobby will be well impressed with your attention to elf and safety  .....OZ.

[jb3cx]

In answer to hermetic  I'm in the north east (Sunderland) the house my mate lives in belongs to the council,apparently every few years the houses are picked at random for an inspection ,just to see that the tennents are keeping the property in good order as per the tenancy agreement,in 25 years this is the first time he has had them in .the inspection team had some concerns about the wiring ,and they sent out the guy to inspect the workshop wiring,

[SwarfnStuff]

Just reading through the various posts re. wiring, are you actually able to wire your workshop? Here in OZ anything to do with the power (240V AC  ) must be done by a qualified, certified, registered, expensive electrician. And you will pay extra for a certificate of compliance that you will possibly never actually receive.
      Similarly with Plumbers, they are a protected species and whilst I have never heard of anyone getting into strife for changing a tap washer I think we're not supposed to do that either according to the letter of the regulations.
Ah rools and regs, don't you just love em?
      To be fair though, it is easy to kill someone with dodgy wiring.
John B

[hermetic]

Hi Rob and all,  Ah! it's a council house, just a bit of bad luck then, but sensible idea to protect the cable. Yes PeteW, I have looked into it, and I have fitted a lot of Kingspan and cellotex, but generally someone else has been paying for it! Jablite is now "self-extinguishing" whereas kingspan and cellotex, are "fire retardent", but at the end of the day, they both burn, and the jablite lasts better than kingspan/cellotex, because the foil film on the expensive stuff is there not only to reflect radiated heat (of which, in most houses there is very little anyway) but also to maintain the gas pockets in the foam to give it its 25 year lifespan. By the time the insulation catches fire, I would be in the next county anyway!. Andrew, yes I know about the polystyrene/pvc reaction, and it doesnt take that long as I have seen some bits of recent loft wiring alredy melting into the polystyrene, which is one of the reasons all the wiring is coming out of the roof space. In the domestic end of the building, (which is an early victorian 2up and 2down now reroofed, windowed and pointed, well neartly) all the loft wiring is clipped out of the way.

Swarfnstuff, well I used to be that qualified and certified registered (but nowhere near expensive enough) electrician, but to be honest, wiring most worshop systems is hardly rocket science, there is a lot of information out there on how to do it properly, and it MUST be done properly! and in the UK today, lots of people are coming out of the armed forces with no experience in any engineering discipline and paying between £3500 and £5000 to be trained as domestic electricians in 5 WEEKS!  I did a five year apprenticship and 3 years at Tech college!
Phil

[John Rudd]

Phil,
Although I'm not a qualified spark, I did a four yr apprenticeship plus college as an instrument tech at ICI, so there is some overlap in trades....I worked with my brother many yrs ago who was a spark, on some housing estate doing rewires.... It was hard graft then in the 80's 
So those coming out of the forces and paying £3-1/2k to do house bashing are welcome to it....it aint easy... I wonder how many of them can do volt drop calcs for cables?

[hermetic]

Hi John, well they are supposed to teach them the rudiments of cook book electrical calcs, but they get coached through the exam anyway, so what difference does it make? I still do a bit of domestic work, but was mainly on industrial and agricultural installs and maintenance for most of my electrical career, and when part P came in, it was a good excuse to refuse the work, although I got my arm twisted by a mate, and did a big part P install under the watchfull eye of the local BCO Elec, who outranks me as he has an HNC to my NC, it was another year of Tech that I should have done, but couldnt face another year squinting at a guessing stick (slide rule) as in those days an electronic calculator cost about 5 weeks wages! TBH I don't think anyone does any calculations for volt drop for domestic installs, and much of what gets put on completion certificates is made up on the fly rather than the results of a ridiculously complex and totally unneccasary testing regime, which seems more designed to cover the sparkies backside rather than achieve a high level of safety. The blind reliance on mcb/rcd/rcbo (none of which fail safe) technology is going to burn houses down in the future! The electrical trade is in gradual meltdown.

[hermetic]

Just to add John, I was part of a two man team who rewired 135 village council houses in E yorks in the seventies, a job that paid quite well, but as you say, extremely hard as we found to our horror that the walls are rendered and skimmed internally, and in the days of hammer and bolster for chases, you would bash away for five minutes getting nowhere, then a square meter of rendering would fall of the wall! We drilled top and bottom and moused the cables down the cavities. Some of these houses were wired just after ww2 and seemed to be wired in anything thaty was handy that would just about conduct electricity. Came across a few where the lighting circuits were wired entirely in that purple cotton covered twisted flex (light drop flex) and all the junction boxes were old lead covered type, with scruit connectors!

[SwarfnStuff]

Hermetic, I seem to recall that in New South Wales here, there was a domestic license training course that allowed you to work on wiring in your own home.
      I do have a friendly sparky though so that helps.
John B

[RobWilson]

Afternoon Lads

Well I thought I would try out a few cable fixing methods today , knocked up a wee sample 




I think "D" is a bit extravagant as bent nails ain't  cheep .



Rob
 

[philf]

Rob,

All look good to me! 

Phil.

[appletree]

I think A or B are the most secure, A having the advantage that concrete and the like can be drilled for wall plugs.
Joking aside although meant for SWA cables these work well for SY cables too.
http://www.screwfix.com/c/electrical-lighting/cable-clips/cat830572

Phil