Moving cooker isolator - tiled area :(

pingufan

Ahh,

I've had an electrical report done on the house and the only thing that came up is that I have a cooker isolator switch and a double socket right above the cooker electric hob.

Apparently this is not good and these will need to be moved.

Gutted as all the area above the cooker and about a metre either side is tiled in coloured tiles and these will have to be broken to remove the existing boxes and create new ones.

I can't afford to break them all off in the kitchen and I dont have any spares for touching up the broken tiles.

I have wondered if I can move the sockets, then cover up all the tiles with a respatex type panel but can't find whether they can be used above a cooker.

I know I can use stainless steel and glass - steel won;t really go with the kitchen style and glass is pricey too.

Any ideas please?

olias

Re route the wiring from source to a new location avoiding the tiled area. This will make the existing sockets and isolator redundant as they will be 'dead' spurs. Then simply replace the front cover of these now redundant switches with blanking plates. Preferably metal ones so there is no danger of them melting above the hob.

http://www.sparksdirect.co.uk/mk-2g-blanking-plate-double-gang-metal-blanking-plate

Olias

pingufan

Brilliant, thanks sometimes it just needs a new pair of eyes on the situation.

I guess he will need to get behind the cooker and the kitchen units though to wire it all up?

The cabling supplying the cooker is visible above the top of the kitchen cupboards but I guess he will have to marry this up to the cooker itself some way?

The double socket won;t be the end of the world if its made reundant and I cant use it - there's more sockets in the kitchen elsewhere.

olias

pingufan wrote: »

I guess he will need to get behind the cooker and the kitchen units though to wire it all up?

Yep, but should be fairly easy - if cooker is freesatnding it'll just pull out - if its built in, they are only held in by a couple of screws. Worse case scenario is you might have to cut a small access hole in the rear of the inside of one of the cupboards, but unlikely.

The cabling supplying the cooker is visible above the top of the kitchen cupboards but I guess he will have to marry this up to the cooker itself some way?

In that case, you will just have to decide the best, least problematic route to re-route it to the rear of the cooker, avoiding the tiled area. Should be quite easy to do neatly, and the sparky will be able to advise you of the easiest and neatest route that complies with regs.

Hope that helps.

Olias

pingufan

Fantastic. Thanks very much :beer: