DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Bad – Kitchen Fitters

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Last weeks Cowboy Award Winner is also this weeks winner. We returned back to the property to make repairs to the gas and placement of light switches and fused spur. What we found was even more shocking!

So our job was to locate the hidden cable that what was feeding the fan, the fluorescent light, the cooker spur and the hob from the 32 amp kitchen circuit. We started by isolating the kitchen circuit and removing the  light switch and spur covers so that we could visually trace the cables back from where they were coming from. What we found as we kept digging at the wall is the mess pictured below.

Fortunately we found a ring main which came straight down from the ceiling directly behind the hob. Unfortunately we then found the hidden junction box behind which was hiding behind the tiles and a layer of plaster. From there the cables ran over to the 13 amp switched fused spur via a metal back box with no grommets to protect the cable. From the spur ran three low heat flexi cables ran back out through the metal back box again with no grommets. Two of the cables ran back towards the hidden junction box and beyond to feed the double light switch which in turn controlled the fan and light. The other flexi cable, again with no grommet, ran down through the plaster to feed the electric cooker. It turns out that the hob wasn’t run off the mains but rather a hidden battery pack behind a shelf.

We stripped out all of the electrics, re-routed the ring main cables away from the middle of the fake chimney breast and then inserted three junction boxes into the ring main. We then set up three separate switched fused spurs to divide the power with the correctly sized fuses for each leg. You can see the new spurs in the cupboard to the right. The spurs were divided into:

1. A 3amp spur for the gas hob. Gas hobs almost always require only a 3amp fuse. A fuse larger than 3 amp will cause a lot of damage to the hob if there is ever a short circuit. For the sake of a few pence you can buying yourself a new hob.
2. A 5amp spur for the light and extractor fan. Again, the light and fan use very little power so a 5 amp is what should be in place. We moved the light switches to another location which cannot be seen in the photo.
3. A 13 amp spur or the cooker. The oven was correctly hooked up to a switched 13 amp spur however it was also feeding everything else under the sun at a fuse rating that was only correct for the oven.

We also removed the old appliances and the poorly mounted hob, work surface and shelf that the cooker was sitting on. We rebuilt a brick plinth for the cooker and replaced the worksurface with a butcher block unit. We completed everything in just over a day and the system is now safe and looks good.

ALWAYS make  sure  that your kitchen fitter is trained and is a member of a regulatory body. If they’re working on gas then they MUST be members of Gas Safe Register and if they are touching ANY electrics in your kitchen they MUST be members of NIC EIC or NAPIT or EAL. If they are not members of these groups then get rid.

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