Advice on installing my own electric cooker?

espresso

Quiet_Spark wrote: »

6mm² cable is nowhere near big enough for that cooker you have, and the 32A MCB in your consumer unit won't be any good either.

If you want that cooker in, the cable from the consumer unit needs to be upgraded to 10mm² minimum and the current MCB will need to be raised from 32A to 50A.

You either need to get a qualified sparks in to modify the existing cooker point (and associated circuitry), or change that cooker for one that requires half the power of the one you have now.

Epic fail. :mad:

thescouselander wrote: »

Lets not get carried away here. You need to apply load diversity to the cooker as in the first 10 amps plus 30% of the remaining load.

So at 13kw its

13000/230 = 56.5 amps (approx) at full load.

so the circuit needs to support

10 + (56.5-10) x 0.3 = 24 amps (approx)

plus another 5 assuming your cooker point has a built in socket = 29 Amps.

So 6mm cable and a 32 amp breaker is the thing to use and this is what has been used all over the country for donkey's years.

Re the use of 10mm cable you might have trouble getting this into the terminals on the cooker and I note the instructions only cover cables up to 6mm which suggests the terminals are not sized to go any bigger.


The bottom line - keep your current wiring and connect the cooker to the cooker point with 6mm cable.

Spot on, good advice.

Sandwich

So I've gotten conflicting advice in this thread, and while I honestly do appreciate everyone's input, thescouselander is the only one who's given a clear reason to back up his advice, so I'm going to go with his advice unless someone else gives me a reason not to between now and Monday.

And besides, what scouselander is saying makes sense to me because it would seem strange for a landlord to install all of the wiring necessary for an electric cooker and for it to not be able to handle the electric cooker I've got, which is a fairly standard one (i.e., not a range cooker or anything like that).

thescouselander

Just to give a bit more confidence I've got a similarly sized cooker running over the same setup and it survived Christmas dinner with everything switched on without incident.

I'm also a Chartered Eengineer and although, strictly speaking, I haven't done the Part P qualifications etc I do know a good bit about electricity and work on safety critical systems routinely.

Ectophile

thescouselander's response was the first bit of common sense I've seen on this thread. Ever since I was little, people have been wiring electric cookers into 30A supplies. It's standard practice for all but the huge range cookers.

The supply is protected by a 32A breaker, so the house isn't going to burn down. At worst, the breaker will trip. But in the real world, it won't, because they just don't.

Sandwich

Sorry to dredge this up again now that it's seemingly settled, but I just wanted to ask about the actual procedure of wiring in the cooker, because it's coming tomorrow. Here's my plan. Perhaps someone could tell me if it's correct:

1) Shut off all switches at consumer unit.

2) Strip a couple of inches off the end of the 6mm T&E cable so that I can get at the T&E and neutral. Then strip about 10mm of the insulation off both the T & E wires, and connect to the appropriate terminal wires, making sure to keep all of the copper strands together and everything neat and tidy:



3) Repeat at the cooker back panel (although I've no idea what the connections are like at the back of an electric cooker).

4) Electrics back on, and cook something delicious!

Ectophile

If it's modern T&E, there won't be any strands - they are all solid core these days.

There are a couple of things you haven't mentioned.

1. Don't leave the bare earth core in the T&E bare. If you're unlucky, it will bend and touch the live while you're reassembling everything. Stick some insulating sleeving over it so it's nice and safe.
2. The cooker outlet you've shown has a cable clamp at the bottom. Don't forget to use it.

Edit - if you have a multimeter or continuity tester handy, it's worth doing a quick check that the metalwork of the cooker is really connected to earth. Take a lead from an exposed bit of metalwork on the cooker to something with a known earth.

Sandwich

Ectophile wrote: »

[*]Don't leave the bare earth core in the T&E bare. If you're unlucky, it will bend and touch the live while you're reassembling everything. Stick some insulating sleeving over it so it's nice and safe.

I don't quite understand what you mean here. Are you saying to make sure the cores don't overlap?

muckybutt

Sandwich wrote: »

I don't quite understand what you mean here. Are you saying to make sure the cores don't overlap?

I am sorry to say "You are an accident waiting to happen" for the sake of a few quid get an electrician in to connect the cooker up - SAFELY ! you may not be able to connect the cooker up anyhow if it requires crimps for the terminal blocks.

Pennylane

muckybutt wrote: »

I am sorry to say "You are an accident waiting to happen" for the sake of a few quid get an electrician in to connect the cooker up - SAFELY ! you may not be able to connect the cooker up anyhow if it requires crimps for the terminal blocks.

Totally agree. Fingers crossed the OP actually lives until Xmas. :rotfl:

You'll get it done for under £50 and live to see this Xmas.

thescouselander

So how did you get on with this OP?

Re. Ectophile's comment you need to get a bit of yellow and green earth sleeving and slip it over the exposed earth conductor so it doesn't touch anything it shouldn't.


Also, what type of terminal is on the cooker end and does it require crimped connectors? Perhaps a picture would be a good idea.

I'd also add make sure the cable gripper has secured the cable tightly. 6mm cable is relatively stiff so it could easily pull itself out of the terminals as you move the cooker into position if it isn't gripped tightly.