Moving an electricity meter and consumer unit

maurice28

Apologies in advance if these are stupid questions, or even don't make sense, but this isn't my area of expertise! 

We are due to have an extension built on the back of our house, which will involve knocking down the existing external wall and opening up the kitchen into the extension. Our electricity meter is currently on the internal wall, slap bang in the middle of where will be knocked through, so we need it moving.

I'm looking at potential places to have it moved. One option is potentially to move it along the wall it is already on and put it at the back of another cupboard (it's already at the back of a cupboard currently, along with the consumer unit). The only place to move it though would be in a cupboard next to the sink - it wouldn't be directly under the sink, it would be in a separate cupboard, probably about 20 cm from the sink. Would this be allowable?

Also, does the consumer unit always have to be next to the meter? Another option is potentially moving the meter to become an external one outside - in that case, would the consumer unit need to in inside, on the internal wall next to where the meter is outside?

Again, sorry if none of that makes sense but hopefully someone can help!

TELLIT01

Moving the meter and/or consumer unit any distance is not a trivial task.  Moving the meter is easier as there is often just one cable to consider - the one between it and the consumer unit.  Moving the consumer unit will mean extending or modifying every circuit.  All doable, but at a cost.

Northern_Wanderer

Moving a meter requires involvement of the energy supplier/ network operator, just in case you didn't know.

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/your-energy-meter/move-your-gas-or-electricity-meter/

ka7e

Had something similar done 2 years ago - meter and consumer unit both re-sited from an internal store room. The meter was moved outside next to the gas meter and the consumer unit is now just inside the front door. An electrician moved the CU and also had to be on site to lay cabling inside the house and for the disconnection and reconnection of the new meter. He also purchased the new meter box.

Our regional electricity supplier (different from your domestic supplier) had to come and survey the path at the side of the house to decide a route for the new cable. They arranged for a 3rd party to dig a channel for cable, and they came back to refill and tarmac the hole after the meter was fitted. The supplier came in, fitted new cable into the channel and set it up for the electrician to connect the "tails".

It all sounds quite complicated, but it was seamlessly done in one day. Cost of moving meter was about £2k to supplier - the electrician's bill was included in rewiring costs.

maurice28

Thanks all! Yes, should have said, I've completed the online quote process with Electricity North West so have a price. The back garden will be dug up anyway as part of the extension build and an electrician has been found and quoted for moving the CU and all the internal reconnection.

I'll go ahead with the quote from ENW and then they will do a site visit to discuss further, so hopefully there's no issues! 

fenwick458

maurice28 said:

I'm looking at potential places to have it moved. One option is potentially to move it along the wall it is already on and put it at the back of another cupboard (it's already at the back of a cupboard currently, along with the consumer unit). The only place to move it though would be in a cupboard next to the sink - it wouldn't be directly under the sink, it would be in a separate cupboard, probably about 20 cm from the sink. Would this be allowable?

I'm sure you can come up with a better place for it than in a kitchen cupboard, thats a bad idea

maurice28 said:

Also, does the consumer unit always have to be next to the meter? 

No they don't have to be together. the maximum length of the tails (from the meter to the consumer unit) are 3m though, and if it's more than 3m away you'll need to install another isolator with a fuse in it.
normally when the consumer unit or cut out is in the way of an extension you get in touch with the DNO and arrange for the work to be done, then you just build the extension around it and put an external meter box in at the outside of the extension. once the  supply cable is ready to be moved (by the DNO) they will move the cable(or joint it, or put a new one in) to the external meter box, and the it's upto your electrician to connect it up to the consumer unit again. but in your situation the electrician would also be moving the consumer unit at the same time.
there will probably be a suitable place to move the consumer unit to (other than the kitchen cupboard) but it's probably best discussing this with your electrician on site as it's too hard to say without seeing it. Ideally it should go further back in towards the middle of the house so that all the cables don't have to be jointed. that saves time on the job, and you end up with a better job.