Thoughts on future proofing the home

[Creamy Goodne5]

Bit of an outside question here but interested on hearing other electricians advice.

Im having the master bedroom redecorated and re skimmed this month and the bedroom is straight above the internal garage where the consumer unit is.

We have spoken recently about maybe doing a loft conversion upstairs in the future if we don't decide to move and I also want to do some rewiring work when I can be bothered to do it, the outside lights for some unknown reason are wired off a FCU in an upstairs cupboard that used to house the security system (I removed the system it a few years back) and I want to sort it out so i can run a few new outside lights.

The electrician in me is thinking that while I can make a mess should I run a 2.5 and 1mm cable up the bedroom wall from the consumer unit, into the attic and reel up at each end just to future proof any work.

The other consideration is I have a redundant 10mm in the attic already from the En suite shower I just removed. Do I use that to create a second consumer unit in the attic that I can then run any future supplies from.

Any thoughts? Me thinks running more cables for no reason other than I can is a bit of a waste of time.

 

[pc1966]

If you have a realistic chance to use it, then putting it in makes sense.

Or putting in some conduit (even just PVC) so you can pull stuff through later without re-decorating?

Re-using the 10mm is also viable, the only issue there is if you can't guarantee is is deeper than 50mm from any surface it will need 30mA RCD protection, so you will have all circuits off it on the one RCD. That is OK, as many houses have single or dual RCD boards, but far from ideal if you were designing from scratch.

 

[Creamy Goodne5]

If you have a realistic chance to use it, then putting it in makes sense.

Or putting in some conduit (even just PVC) so you can pull stuff through later without re-decorating?

Re-using the 10mm is also viable, the only issue there is if you can't guarantee is is deeper than 50mm from any surface it will need 30mA RCD protection, so you will have all circuits off it on the one RCD. That is OK, as many houses have single or dual RCD boards, but far from ideal if you were designing from scratch.

The plan going forward is changing the main consumer unit to a Fusebox Full RCBO board so if I was doing that I would get their 3 way RCBO board for the attic.

 

[pc1966]

The plan going forward is changing the main consumer unit to a Fusebox Full RCBO board so if I was doing that I would get their 3 way RCBO board for the attic.

Going RCBO is the way forwards for sure! Just you would then have a 30mA RCBO feeding the 10mm, then further 30mA RCBOs in the smaller CU, so you won't have any selectivity on earth faults.

As I said, not a major problem for most folks, but not really a good design either.

Had it been 10mm SWA then you could have fed it from a MCB or (better still) as separate switched-fuse and achieved selectivity on earth leakage, and decent selectivity on hard over-current faults as well.

 

[UNG]

Put some spare conduits in the wall that could be used for data, CCTV, tv cabling in the future

When I bought my house just over 20 years ago it was a new build I manged to put a number of oval conduits in before they plastered for future use unfortunately I never guessed all the places I now want to get cables to

 

[Let me think]

Personal experience, no matter what you think the future may involve, what ever you do today to plan for it, never matches up with what you expected...or I've just been (un)luckily depending on how you look at it.

Anyway really like UNG suggestion, if you can install conduit of some sort to pull through whatever cables you will need further down the line (assuming cable will still be a 'thing' in the future) - Question is now, multiple narrow conduit runs vs one extra wide?

Good luck with what ever you decide to go with. I would just leave as it and deal with whatever arises when it does further down the line )assuming further down the line is not next year) - regs may have changed by then anyway, along with building controls, which could impact on how you do things anyway.