Ring mains in a new build

Afternoon all, first post so go easy!  

I've come here becuase im not an electrician and i want an experts opinion based on regulations.

We've just moved into a new build property and it has a consumer unit in the garage, all looks fine. Anyway i was looking at what switches did what as it had two for sockets and assumed it was two ring mains, probably upstairs and downstairs as it had been in previous properties.

However, when testing, it appears its wired up so that the front half of the house is on one switch, and the back half of the house is on the other.

Is this normal? I even went as far as talking to the people who inspected it and provided the certificate but i wanted a second opinion as he basically said it depends on how the electrician wants to wire it up and theres no regulations around how it should be wired. One of the other houses on the estate where i live (the same type of house might i add) is wired up differently, which is wire upstairs/downstairs as i assumed originally.

Can anyone tell me if its right that its wired like this, and whether or not there are any regulations around it please?

Thanks in advance!

Its not a Regulation as far as I know .     Its quite a good method actually ... if one of the circuits tripped out , at least you would have a second circuit of plugs ,    either at the front  , up & down  or at the back , up & down .

It probably saves cable too , at first fix ,   with up & down rings the up  wiring  virtually follows the down wiring .   

A 3 bed house , in my opinion ,  would only need a general ring  covering Lounge /dining /upstairs     and a kitchen ring .  

So don't worry , its fine , I see a lot of new properties wired that way.  

You can wire any circuit however you want to..

To supply any parts of a property that you consider suitable..

Upstairs / Downstairs tends to be less common on modern properties with concrete ground floors..

As you can't just run cables under the downstairs floor!

As all wiring will have to go via the 'downstairs ceiling - upstairs floor' void then it is more practical to wire each circuit part up & down..

May be front / back..  or left / right..

From another practical point of view circuits that combine some up & down can be more convenient in the event of a fault..

As you don't lose all power to a whole floor..

Which could be considered more compliant with the wiring reg that states installations should minimise inconvenience in the event of a fault!

The key objective of the wiring regulations is to ensure people property & livestock are not put in danger due to electrical faults..

How your sockets are wired presents no electrical danger whatsoever.

Guinness

SPECIAL LOCATION said:

How your sockets are wired presents no electrical danger whatsoever.

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I think that all depends if you're not an electrician and think somethings isolated across the floor and it isn't 

Generally speaking though i do fully agree with that statement.

Thanks for the replies everyone, i'm assuming this would be a quick wiring reshuffle at the consumer unit if i did want it wired like that though? (by a qualified electrician that is!) Cant take more than an hour surely?

nfs2000 said:

'm assuming this would be a quick wiring reshuffle at the consumer unit if i did want it wired like that though? (by a qualified electrician that is!) Cant take more than an hour surely?

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Theres no point doing that  .   And no it would be pain in the aristotle  to do .      The whole point , as Specs said ,  is to give you two circuits in case one fails  , same with the lights . 

I made a point a few days ago about houses in the 1950s ...1960s    could have a  3 way board ...  one light circuit throughout .../...  one ring main  & probably a cooker . 

No thought given to the inconvenience  of having no lights ,say .     

Evans Electric said:

Theres no point doing that  .   And no it would be pain in the aristotle  to do .      The whole point , as Specs said ,  is to give you two circuits in case one fails  , same with the lights . 

I made a point a few days ago about houses in the 1950s ...1960s    could have a  3 way board ...  one light circuit throughout .../...  one ring main  & probably a cooker . 

No thought given to the inconvenience  of having no lights ,say .     

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True enough, thanks for the information although convincing the Mrs of this might be a different story! 

There are more things to worry about than how the plugs in your house are divided up into circuits ...they're  safe , forget them and move on . 

Personally I think you should be thankful it’s wired this way, as said, minimises inconvenience if one circuit fails, just don’t brag about it to you other neighbours house that’s wired differently as they might want theirs that way too! 
 

as long as the consumer unit is correctly labelled to show circuit as opposed to just sockets then nothing really to concern yourself with.  

nfs2000 said:

, i'm assuming this would be a quick wiring reshuffle at the consumer unit if i did want it wired like that though? (by a qualified electrician that is!) Cant take more than an hour surely?

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That is absolutely not possible - the cables may be at the fuseboard - but how they run to sockets and between sockets is anybodies guess

Unless you are prepared to rewire most of both circuits I'd leave it well alone 

nfs2000 said:

I think that all depends if you're not an electrician and think somethings isolated across the floor and it isn't 

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Why would you assume something isolates a floor,

when there has never been any standard to say you should?

Bit like assuming all sockets must be on a ring circuit.. 

Or assuming which circuit a landing light is fed from..

Or which circuit supplies light switches on a three-way arrangement between two stairways from ground to loft conversion..

Anybody who is not competent enough to establish if an accessory is live or dead, and where it is supplied from,

or has little understanding of how circuits are wired,

or what cables sizes and protective devices should be used for the expected load,

For their own safety should not be messing around with anything electrical.

Guinness

As special location says never assume anything is isolated, the safe isolation procedure must be carried out and if you can't do that and you still want to do any works on the installation the best advice would be to turn everything off at all MCBs and the main switch. 

The stickers on the CU can be way off, the MCB marked as kitchen sockets only turning off half of the kitchen whilst the rest are on the house socket circuit for example. The number of times I find an MCB isn't just for the circuit it is marked up as or doesn't even isolate, or only in part isolates the circuit it is marked up as.

Back in the good old days of rewireable fuseboxes you'd have the 3 or 4 circuits Evans electric mentions but there'd usually be a socket on the cooker isolator too, if you lost your socket circuit you still had the one on your cooker isolator and you still had the immersion heater on its own circuit as a back up if your boiler was spurred off the socket circuit. Although now a very dated system it was well thought out at the time.

When I rewired our last house the kitchen got a ring main and the remaining 4 rooms got their own 20a radials. I've seen houses split front to back, up/down, not at all. and all other random variations on the above. Our current one is split 2 ring mains, kitchen/house. Just depends on the spark who wired it. 

With the introduction of split load boards it was standard practice to put the down sockets on with the up lights on one RCD and vice versa on the other RCD with the intention that light could always be used on each floor, either via the socket circuit or lighting circuit in the event of a fault causing one RCD to trip. RCBOs now remove that problem although there are plenty of split load boards still being installed.

SPECIAL LOCATION said:

Why would you assume something isolates a floor,

when there has never been any standard to say you should?

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I like your full response, it sounds similar to something I would say in response to someone who knows little about the field hes enquiring about, of which I am an expert. That being the point here - i am not an expert in electrics.

So put yourself in my position, using that fact i would draw on my own experience - every single house ive ever lived in, and im 38, has been wired upstairs/downstairs. So with no particular standard that im aware of (and why would i know, i dont have to know, im not an electrician) i asked both the developer, and indeed on here for a second opinion on whether its right to have the house wired this way so that i can get it rectified if needed, regardless of how much better it may or may not be.

If there is no standard to adhere to, its obviously personal preference, and my preference would be to have it the same as every other house ive lived in for consistency which also matches one of the other houses on the estate which is the same type, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that if there's no standard. Not only that, if there was a chance of flooding, im guessing it would prevent having to turn off electric to the entire house, as all sockets downstairs could be submerged.

In addition, and one of the main reasons i asked on here is because the people who did the wiring in this house could have been more diligent in their job, ive had numerous problems, albeit all relatively easy to fix. Examples are as follows:

1) Living room light wouldnt work if a switch in the kitchen hadnt been turned on already.

2) Junction boxes above the cupboards for LED lights under the cupboards left open/not screwed down properly, live wires exposed, and yes, i have felt up there looking for something and did indeed s#it myself when i realised what it was and what i was touching.

3) Missing light pendant in the dining room

4) Shaver socket loose

5) Various sockets left slightly loose or not flush.

Some may call these snags, i say for electrics this is a s#it show.

So you'll have to excuse me if i don't realise that the wiring for half/half is actually fine. I'm glad that theres no standard and its been done right, but it does frustrate me because the consumer unit although labelled with presumably standard stickers which say 'sockets' of which there are two, one at each side of the CU doesnt say which sockets, or where, and nothing said at home demo stage so it was always going to be trial and error in finding out what it turned off.

Your thoughts right now probably revolved around whether i have done the work to fix these issues? Yes i have. The reason for that is because the developer wont let their staff inside peoples houses due to Covid, and im absolutely not going to put up with exposed live wires in a house with children no matter where they are, nor am i going to put up with loose sockets for the same obvious reasons. Its a health and safety issue that needed resolving as a priority.

I successfully isolated everything required before doing any work. Everything was straight forward, but it puzzled me why the sockets would be wired that way as to me it didnt at the time make sense if you had a flood as i said above. 

SPECIAL LOCATION said:

Anybody who is not competent enough to establish if an accessory is live or dead, and where it is supplied from,

or has little understanding of how circuits are wired,

or what cables sizes and protective devices should be used for the expected load,

For their own safety should not be messing around with anything electrical.

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I agree.

Murdoch said:

That is absolutely not possible - the cables may be at the fuseboard - but how they run to sockets and between sockets is anybodies guess

Unless you are prepared to rewire most of both circuits I'd leave it well alone 

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I will be doing based on everyone's advice here, it doesn't seem to be a big enough issue for me to bother about.

boltonsparky said:

When I rewired our last house the kitchen got a ring main and the remaining 4 rooms got their own 20a radials. I've seen houses split front to back, up/down, not at all. and all other random variations on the above. Our current one is split 2 ring mains, kitchen/house. Just depends on the spark who wired it. 

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And this is another point - why have one house wired one way, and literally 3 houses down, the very same type of house is wired differently. They must have had a different person on each house but you would think they would label it or explain it during handover/demo.

In my humble opinion, there should be a standard around this within the regulations, and that standard should dictate as a minimum that the wiring of the house and how its split should be explained either in a document or at the CU. I really dont see why it would not be explained, after all, you're always going to get someone that think they know about electrics and will have a go despite having no experience whatsoever in that field.

nfs2000 said:

Examples are as follows:

1) Living room light wouldn't work if a switch in the kitchen hadn't been turned on already.

2) Junction boxes above the cupboards for LED lights under the cupboards left open/not screwed down properly, live wires exposed, and yes, i have felt up there looking for something and did indeed s#it myself when i realised what it was and what i was touching.

3) Missing light pendant in the dining room

4) Shaver socket loose

5) Various sockets left slightly loose or not flush.

Some may call these snags, i say for electrics this is a s#it show.

Click to expand...

Welcome to the reality of new builds - wired by unskilled people, tested by people under pressure ...........

Keep moaning, in a constructive and written way, at the developer to sort the issues out

Back to socket arrangements ....... up / down or left / right or front / back or kitchen & utility / all others or just one circuit ............ not even sure if there is any guidance - there is a reg that says circuits should be arranged to minimise inconvenience if a circuit (or more likely a RCD trips)  

Your fundamental problem is that house developers generally employ the cheapest labour they can to do the work..

And 99.999999999999% of the time any of the person(s) involved in the wiring & testing of said new-build, will never have to go back...

As they will then either be no-longer a member of the sub-contracted workforce..

Or they have been moved 50miles down the road to progress on with the next development.

I have seen bucket loads of rubbish installations on people who have recently moved into their new-build!

AND you are also right that correct labelling of a consumer unit is an essential item..

Too many incorrectly labelled fuse-boxes are left after "so-called-electricians" have done wiring additions/alterations..

AND..

While there is no regulations saying how you must arrange circuits..

There is a section in the wirings regulations "Section 514" who's title is "Identification & Notices",

which relates to cables, conductors, switches, protective devices etc..     

Where regulation 518.8.1 says:

"A protective device shall be arranged and identified so that the circuit protected my be easily recognised".

(protective devices are your MCB's etc in the fuse box..)

But many will just bang on a standard sticker that came with the fuse box..

even though there is not enough space to write a full description of the circuit layout..

(I will normally included a printout of each circuit and a list of which accessories in each room it supplies.)

Also..

In the commercial / industrial world rather than just labels at a consumer unit..

You will typically find labels on the sockets / switches, saying where they are fed from..

e.g. [ Circuit#4 / Consumer unit #B ],    [ Circuit#8 / Consumer unit #B ],    [ Circuit#11 / Consumer unit #A ]  etc..

or some more shorthand version of the above.  

However this method certainly wouldn't look good on your polished, chrome, flush fitted USB socket in the lounge!!!

 Lazy labelling is a bit problem with a lot of socket circuits!

Guinness

SPECIAL LOCATION said:

(I will normally included a printout of each circuit and a list of which accessories in each room it supplies.)

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I wish you had done this house lol

The problem i have is that if i bang on about it being incorrect or insufficient labelling now, all they have to do to remedy it is come along and write on the sticker to say which circuit it is (hopefully after making sure they're correct) which is obviously something i could do myself.

Sigh... at least i know its done right. For the record, i also called the guy who provided the test certificate yesterday and he said it was absolutely fine wired this way and electrician dependent as to how its done, hence asking a second opinion on here, he would be marking his own homework if i just believed him.

Overall, i really appreciate your advice guys, pleasure having you correct me and tell me how its done along with appropriate regs. I honestly wish every tradesman was like you lot!

you sound like a customer from hell tbh

and as for getting a shock by turning off the wrong circuit, thats why safe isolation should be followed. simply turning off what you think may be the right circuit isnt th way to go

You mentioned "Flood"    a couple of times .    If you are in a flood zone  the electrics should have been installed accordingly  .  

Generally the cut - out  & ground floor sockets at higher levels than usual .    

If flooding is not an issue  then it would be done to BS 7671    .  

i missed the fact that it is a new build .   Most new builds are wired by  the cheapest labour  the builder can find,    installed at  the fastest possible speed   and "tested"  by  a magician who does them without leaving the office....and probably passed off to Building Control by someone who has never been to site. 

Andy™ said:

you sound like a customer from hell tbh

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I'll take that as a compliment  although instead of looking at it that way, i prefer to look at it as due diligence. Given the clear inference here from other electricians commenting as to the reputation and workmanship of electricians on new build sites, i don't know why you would see me inquiring about this with you guys as anything other than a good idea.

Andy™ said:

and as for getting a shock by turning off the wrong circuit, thats why safe isolation should be followed. simply turning off what you think may be the right circuit isnt th way to go

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I never said i got a shock from anything, and i did safely isolate everything and double checked it using various methods.

Evans Electric said:

You mentioned "Flood"    a couple of times .    If you are in a flood zone  the electrics should have been installed accordingly  .  

Generally the cut - out  & ground floor sockets at higher levels than usual .    

If flooding is not an issue  then it would be done to BS 7671    .  

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Thanks for the information but i still wouldn't trust higher placed sockets, theres no telling how high flood water will rise, and who knows, someone (apprentice and the like) could be stupid enough to put an inaccessible junction box lower than the sockets which completely defeats the object

Evans Electric said:

i missed the fact that it is a new build .   Most new builds are wired by  the cheapest labour  the builder can find,    installed at  the fastest possible speed   and "tested"  by  a magician who does them without leaving the office....and probably passed off to Building Control by someone who has never been to site. 

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Id go as far as to say nobody actually inspected it for safety given the loose sockets and open junction boxes on top of the cupboards so you're probably right, but unfortunately ill never know.

as a new build, you should have a circuit schedule printed out next to the board that, in theory, should give clearer guidance as to what cct does what.

binky said:

as a new build, you should have a circuit schedule printed out next to the board that, in theory, should give clearer guidance as to what cct does what.

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not necessarily the case, if the spark only puts sockets, the schedule shows the max Zs and measured Zs and details of the cable size and mcb etc.