Full rewire- circuits

[gurgleenglish]

Good morning

I’m trying to get an electrician pencilled in for a full rewire which has been a nightmare.

I was hoping someone with experience of a rewire can help answer the following:

• what does an electrician mean when they say the kitchen needs its own circuit?
• how do you decide whether a room needs its own circuit or not?
• a separate circuit doesn’t mean a separate fusebox does it? 🙈 I assumed it means it has a separate switch in the fusebox?

I had so many questions for the electrician that they got flustered, and their jargon just confused me. I thought I’d have better luck trying to get an explanation here 🙏🏽

Thank you

It means the kitchen will have its own ring main ( circuit) for the sockets. Which is a good idea.

no you don’t need a separate fusebox ( consumer unit ) for that, it will just be on its own fuse.

Generally speaking more circuits are better , this way it’s easier to fault find if there are any problems in the future. Say if every room/ shower/ cooker / boiler and so on has is own circuit ( fuse ) you can just shut down that area / appliance so less disruption and quicker to sort out.

but the downside is more work running all the extra cables , so more cost and a bigger consumer unit.

Heres a picture of ours. It needs labelling clearer ,but i know what everything is for.

Kitchen will be on a separate circuit and you may well also have a separate circuit to that too for the cooker. As an example, we have a circuit which is just the kitchen plugs, and then we have the double oven on its own 32amp circuit as it draws a lot of power so would overload the existing kitchen circuit and cause tripping / fire hazard.

The deciding of whether a room needs its own circuit or not will be down to the system installer. Ours is largely by floor as it’s an older system, so we have first floor lights, first floor sockets, downstairs lights, downstairs sockets etc. There is no issue with this as we’re not running huge power appliances off the ring main, just tv’s, music systems etc etc. If upon getting quotes you said well I want to run a huge item of equipment off this plug, then that would warrant another circuit with appropriate cabling and so on. As someone said above, having more circuits is good to an extent for fault finding, but if your house is a reasonably straight forward domestic type affair then you’ll be fine on fewer circuits, and no, a new circuit doesn’t mean a new consumer unit, it just means another breaker (RCBO) inside.

It means if the fuse goes it doesn't take the house out

Thanks for all your responses - makes complete sense!

Another question just popped up - is it safe to have sockets under the kitchen sink? I can see there’s one there but I personally wouldn’t have one there in case pipes leak 🙈, and I’m leaning towards having it removed.

Looks like the washing machine is plugged into it but I’d rather move it around 50cm away from the sink area.

Perfectly normal to have a socket under the sink, it’s usually because the washing machine or dishwasher ( or both ) need to go right back to the wall and there is not enough room to put a socket behind it, also difficult to get to if you need to. If you had a leak and any water did drip into it ,then the mcb ( mini circuit breaker) or the rcd would trip and shut the power off. Modern fuse boards are really sensitive , which is good from a safety point of view.

I hate sockets in cupboards, they're ridiculous, and no way would I tolerate one under any sink.