Load on sockets

CEON44

Anyone electrical minded give me some advice on how many plugs I can add to a socket. Recently I bought an aquarium which is great and hopefully going to be an interesting hobby. However I am a bit concerned about how much I am loading up the sockets. In the place I have positioned the tank there is a standard double socket on the wall. The tank at the minute has 8 different plugs. 5 going to an extension on one side of the double socket and 3 going to an extension on the other side. Potentially I could have 2 other pieces of equipment to add so total could be 10. So is this safe? All the plugs on the equipment are as provided by the manufacturers and have not been changed in any way. Both extensions Im using are surge protected and one of them is a "smart" extension allowing timer programming. Most of the equipment is fairly low power, like pumps heaters LED lights etc. If I am overloading how can I keep the same number of connections but in a safe way.

spadoosh

The sockets them self should be fine (mains circuits are typically on a 32a circuit and unless youre using a lot of appliances at once (i meang big ones like cookers, electric heaters, dryers etc) youre not going to exceed it). Your issue is most likely to be with the extension lead. Most extensions leads are rated to 10amps which means a max draw of 2.3kw. Look on the plugs/stickers of all the things youre wanting to use and ensure the total wattage does not exceed the capacity of the extension lead (if its 13amp you can go up to 2.9kw). Heaters are high draw items, thats probably going to be the item you dont want on an extension lead.

CEON44

spadoosh wrote: »

The sockets them self should be fine (mains circuits are typically on a 32a circuit and unless youre using a lot of appliances at once (i meang big ones like cookers, electric heaters, dryers etc) youre not going to exceed it). Your issue is most likely to be with the extension lead. Most extensions leads are rated to 10amps which means a max draw of 2.3kw. Look on the plugs/stickers of all the things youre wanting to use and ensure the total wattage does not exceed the capacity of the extension lead (if its 13amp you can go up to 2.9kw). Heaters are high draw items, thats probably going to be the item you dont want on an extension lead.

Good information. I will go through everything later today but I think I am well below that limit. The heater for example is only 150w and I am pretty sure that would be the worst out of all the equipment. Bit of a relief!