Electrics 101

[swisscheese]

This is really back to basics, I'm a complete Noob when it comes to How home Electrics work, so please bare with me.

 

I'm looking to have the Electric connection from the DNO Main from the boundary run up to the Garage, I was hoping to put the electric Box/Meter there or there abouts.

 

Then what do I do? So i at least have some idea of what the Electrician tells me! 

My Utility room is about 20m away from the Garage, At the moment the favoured location of the ASHP is shown on the diagram, this is primarily due to the proximity to the Utility and Tank.

We are having to have some Solar PV installed and the likely location for that is the Roof of the Living area.

There is a small Void above the Main entrance door where I was hoping to put the Solar inverter etc.

 

So does the main switch go in the Garage? and have consumer unit for the Garage and external lights etc located there. Do I then have another CU in the utility, really a complete noob on this.

 

Any basic rules advice to follow would be great.

Thanks

 

attaching not the best diagram.

 

 

 

[ProDave]

This is really a multi part question.

 

There is no issue with having the supply routed into the garage, and the supply head and meter in the garage.

 

Then have a local consumer unit in the garage for the garage circuits and any close by outside circuits.

 

Next a submain run in SWA cable from the garage to the house. That is best done with a switch fuse, the good old KME is the usual candidate with an 80A fuse. This is better in many ways than feeding the submain from one of the circuits of the garage CU.

 

At the house end it's a separate question about where to locate the house CU, and the utility room looks like a good candidate.

[Stones]

2 minutes ago, ProDave said:

This is really a multi part question.

 

There is no issue with having the supply routed into the garage, and the supply head and meter in the garage.

 

Then have a local consumer unit in the garage for the garage circuits and any close by outside circuits.

 

Next a submain run in SWA cable from the garage to the house. That is best done with a switch fuse, the good old KME is the usual candidate with an 80A fuse. This is better in many ways than feeding the submain from one of the circuits of the garage CU.

 

At the house end it's a separate question about where to locate the house CU, and the utility room looks like a good candidate.

 

This is exactly the approach we used, supply head and meter in garage, CU in garage for treatment plant and garage electrics, SWA into house where main CU located in service cupboard.

 

There were a  number of reasons for doing it this way, first it was the easiest and quickest way of getting a supply on site, second the meter is out the way but convenient enough for reading, and third to facilitate connecting Solar PV in the future, I have somewhere suitable to locate the inverter and make the grid connection.

[Jeremy Harris]

I think a fair few here have opted to have the meter box in a remote location, with a separately switched and fused feed to the consumer unit in the house.  My layout is detailed in a couple of blog posts, and may help.  It's a bit more complex, as I have fed several external circuits from the externally mounted meter box, in addition to the main feed to the house consumer unit:

 

http://www.mayfly.eu/2017/01/domestic-electrical-installation-earthing-and-circuit-protection-part-1/

 

http://www.mayfly.eu/2017/02/domestic-electrical-installation-earthing-and-circuit-protection-part-2/

 

These articles are a bit general, but include the way our system was wired.

[swisscheese]

Thanks Chaps - good to know I'm not miles away in my thinking!

[Vijay]

out of interest, if the meter box and local consumer box are in the garage, would it make a difference if the cable to the second consumer box is fed back under the floor or through the house?

 

Also, would you just bring the main supply cable up through the floor of the garage and not through an external wall? I thought they preferred meters to be outside? (but that may have changed with smart meters?)