Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Electrical oven installation - views! (a bit technical ..)
We've just bought a new oven but it couldn't be installed because I'd not appreciated the difference between an appliance needing to be hardwired vs plugged in (albeit to a dedicated cooker plug with a 13 amp fuse). So back the oven went. That will teach me ..
The problem now is that I'm finding it hard to find an oven I like which is described suitable for a 13 amp fuse. I've had advice from one electrician that anything up to 3.0 kw is fine for 13 amps, and he observed that the manufacturers often overstate the ampage (?) 'just to be safe'. Has anyone else any experience of this? The oven I want is 2.9 kw but says it should have a 16 amp fuse, and when I called the manufacturers to check they just said that 2.9 kw and 1.3 amp was 'borderline', hence their recommendation of 16.
Any thoughts very welcome, though appreciate this might not be the right forum! If we did need to up the ampage what would that involve - would it mean rewiring that socket?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by ant on
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4) Plugging any oven into your existing oven socket with its 13amp fuse should be perfectly safe because if the oven does happen to use too much current then the fuse would just blow. If the fuse does not blow then the oven must be using less than 13amps so is completely safe on your wiring.3) Some things like heaters and rapid boil kettles can be quite high wattage, eg this kettle is 3000watts, Thats more than your oven was rated at and most people wouldn't think twice about where they plugged that kettle in.I'm not an electrician and have no electrical certifications....When you say "dedicated cooker plug with a 13 amp fuse" do you mean thats what the connection on the wall where the oven goes is or what you have on the main electrical switchboard? Most oven wiring should be a dedicate circuit from the switchboard and so would have its own circuit breaker/fuse on the switchboard.Watts = volts times amps, UK mains volts is 240 so 240v x 13a = 3120watts1) So a standard 13amp mains socket should be fine with up to 3120 watts.2) Most UK mains wiring can actually support much more than that, eg this which is rated at 23amps
5) If the fuse does blow, then an electrician could have a look at the wiring and deem it capable of supporting 16amps (see (2) above) and replace your dedicate oven connection on the wall with its 13amp fuse with a new one with a 16amp fuse, and thats probably fine especially if it is a dedicated circuit from the switchboard. If the electrician looks at the wiring and decides its not capable of that then i guess you'd need to get a new cable run from your switch board to the oven which would mean digging up your walls etc so it might be easier to find the lower wattage oven.
If you hadn't already sent the oven back i'd say just try it with your exsiting socket with 13amp fuse. Probably it would be fine. If you worry you could borrow a current meter from someone and see how close it gets to 13amps when you switch all the oven elements and grill on full.
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest on
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"I'm not an electrician and have no electrical certifications...."
Haha, great start to a post Ant!
Alison, I have an electrician called Steve I use. He can be tricky to pin down, but he is great when you can. I will forward his phone number for you to give him a call. He might be able to help you fit your oven and do what ever re-wiring you might/might not need...
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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I think electrical regulations state that any fixed cooker or oven must be hardwired to a dedicated fixed outlet ( ie not a 13 A socket) and there must be an easily-accessible double-pole isolator/control unit. Remember, your 13A socket will probably be on a ring with the other sockets in the kitchen so if the oven is on, drawing 12A say, and you plug in a kettle, also drawing 12A or more, your wiring is going to be under a bit of a strain.
If for any reason you had a fire your insurance would be invalid
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AIUI thats only necessary for greater than 3kw (or more precisely > 13amp) appliances. Most single ovens are less than 3kw these days, its double ovens and hobs that are usually more than 3kw and so require the dedicated circuit. Just plugging an oven that required 16amps into a 13amp socket shouldn't invalidate your insurance as it would just blow the fuse. What would invalidate your insurance is if you fiddled about with the socket to change it to have a 16amp fuse.
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Permalink Reply by Alison P on
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This (JohnD's point) isn't the case from all the docs and guidance I've read so far - it is usually pretty clear which need to be hard wired and they tend to be the higher power guzzling double ovens etc.
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Thank you so much everyone, this is very helpful. Unfortunately, in the process of finding out more about our wiring, I've managed to trip the whole kitchen circuit. So now I really do need an electrical and someone is kindly coming round later. I will see what he thinks. On the phone he made the same point Ant makes about the power requirements of some kettles!
But just to answer one of the questions here, we only have a kitchen circuit and not a separate cooker one.
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Permalink Reply by Gordon T on
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I believe the Building Regulations were changed a few years ago and now require electrical work in kitchens and bathrooms to be undertaken by a qualified electrician.
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You will need a hard wired connection on a dedicated circuit from your fuse board (or consumer unit as also known) for safety reasons. In the uk we tend to get 220 to 230v. Even a 2900w cooker will use close to or over 13 amps and the existing ring you have will have other appliances so you'll tip well over 13A draw with the kettle and a washing machine / dish washer etc..
Kettles can use as much as 13A or a little over but they are on for a few minutes max. This allows the wiring to cool. An oven is on for a significantly longer duration and the wiring will get hot.
I recommend you either get a dedicated 16A feed and have the oven hard wired by a certified professional (the manufactures are not playing it safe - this is what you need) or get a gas oven and have it fitted by a Gas Safe registered installer. You don't want to start a fire and have no insurance pay out - or worse cause loss of life due to a bodge job - just get the work done properly!
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