• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Regular readers will recall me saying no more renovations. Well.........

Woodbloke said:
Sodium levels are so low you can't taste it; my doc said as it's so low (virtually non existent) it's not worth worrying about (and I have high BP!) so I don't. Say again, I've been drinking soft water out the tap and in tea/coffee for 30+ years now and I'm still alive to tell the tale. If there was any trace of 'salt' in the water SWIMBO would be the first to refuse to drink it...and she's been imbibing for the same amount of time as me - Rob
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Yup. I've been smoking 100 cigarettes a day for 60 years and it's done me no harm either :ROFLMAO:
 
There are salt free water softeners. Usually referred to as descalers. Some also filter as well. Ours is a salt free triple cartridge system and it supplies the steam ovens, both coffee machines, the chiller etc. It also supplies the water to the Koi pond filtration systems.
 
I skim read your reply Adrian and thought: "his carp drink coffee and adjust the temp of their pond?"😲...quick headshake and back to more careful perusals...
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
I skim read your reply Adrian and thought: "his carp drink coffee and adjust the temp of their pond?"😲...quick headshake and back to more careful perusals...
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You have long been on my ignore list. It's a list of one. I did look at this post which confirmed my view about you. Just in case other readers are unaware, Koi (and most fish) die rapidly if water quality is poor - nitrates and nitrites, chlorine and other chemical traces are very harmful for aquatic life. We believe that if you keep animals of any kind you should look after them carefully. Please feel free to ignore me too as I feel our perspectives are far apart. If you reply I will not see it.
 
AJB Temple said:
You have long been on my ignore list. It's a list of one. I did look at this post which confirmed my view about you. Just in case other readers are unaware, Koi (and most fish) die rapidly if water quality is poor - nitrates and nitrites, chlorine and other chemical traces are very harmful for aquatic life. We believe that if you keep animals of any kind you should look after them carefully. Please feel free to ignore me too as I feel our perspectives are far apart. If you reply I will not see it.
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I think Sam was laughing at himself for misreading your post andmomentarily thinking your fish drink coffee rather than suggesting you weren’t a responsible fish owner!
 
Blackswanwood said:
I think Sam was laughing at himself for misreading your post andmomentarily thinking your fish drink coffee rather than suggesting you weren’t a responsible fish owner!
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That's exactly the way I read it as well which is why I put in a laugh emoji as soon as I read it earlier. I think as a biologist Sam would have been perfectly equipped to write a comprehensive put down had that been his intention.

Someone seems to be a bit thin skinned today. ;)
 
Lons said:
That's exactly the way I read it as well which is why I put in a laugh emoji as soon as I read it earlier. I think as a biologist Sam would have been perfectly equipped to write a comprehensive put down had that been his intention.

Someone seems to be a bit thin skinned today. ;)
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Nope. I don't care.
 
There is a special place in Hell for those who bury the ring main under plaster.
 
Most iritating, I have seen alot of dangerous wiring in walls and ceilings. The worst was wire ends twisted together with no murets let alone not in a junction box.
 
Spectric said:
Also for those still using ring's !! It is 2025 and not 1990.
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Out of interest, why? I always prefer a ring to a radial - I can break and extend a ring, add a spur or fused spur; I cannot do either of these with a radial circuit anywhere near as easily. You also don't have to try and track backwards and work out the load in a ring..... genuinely interested in what you perceive the advantages are of a radial set-up (other then for a single dedicated high draw appliance or equipment)
 
I was wondering the same thing especially a radial seems to be the norm here.
I found this article
www.electriciansforums.net

Ring Final Circuit (RFC) versus Radial. Yes, again. - in - Electrical Engineering Chat

, Ring Final Circuit (RFC) versus Radial. Yes, again., Electrical Engineering Chat, ElectriciansForums.net Est.2006 | Free Electrical Advice Forum and page_number.
www.electriciansforums.net www.electriciansforums.net

I’m not am electrician BTW but have, AFAIK, wired my workshop and garage according to relevant codes here.
 
StevieB said:
Out of interest, why? I always prefer a ring to a radial - I can break and extend a ring, add a spur or fused spur; I cannot do either of these with a radial circuit anywhere near as easily. You also don't have to try and track backwards and work out the load in a ring..... genuinely interested in what you perceive the advantages are of a radial set-up (other then for a single dedicated high draw appliance or equipment)
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Me too. I'm curious.

Here's a photo of El Bodger's handywork

20250702_172248.jpg
 
StevieB said:
Out of interest, why? I always prefer a ring to a radial - I can break and extend a ring, add a spur or fused spur; I cannot do either of these with a radial circuit anywhere near as easily.
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Radials are much easier to both instal and perform statutory testing on and do not have the inherent issues that come with a ring main. With a radial you can just add a socket as there are no such things as spurs, so you can easily add sockets. With 2.5mm CSA use a 20 amp protective device or 4mm CSA with a 32 amp protective device. You leave the consumer unit and just feed your sockets and when you get to the last one thats it is as there is no return to the board. With a ring you have issues with bridging where someone has put another circuit in parallel with part of the existing ring or it becomes broken so now you have a 2.5mm cable protected by a 32 amp device which requires more current to disconnect than a 2.5mm cable can handle.
 
There are advantages & disadvantages with both ring mains & radials, from my experience it seems to be personal choice as to which a particular electrician chooses to use
 
Rings save a bit of copper, radials are a LOT better to wire and troubleshoot. No brainer really - radials are better.
 
One of the byproducts of my military experience was certification as a Master Electrician. That was many years ago and I didn't maintain the certification; however, I traveled the world installing our systems, always starting with the electrical distribution.

I can't think of any national emergency that would justify me touching a ring configuration. My only experience with them were in the various sites in the UK. My first task at new installation or renovation projects there was to remove all of the electrical infrastructure and replace it with a radial circuits.
 
Having seen what El Bodgeo has done I concur. He has got a radial as the starting cable to what eventually trns out to be a ringmain. Life...too short...
 
RogerS said:
A few more photos....hot water cylinder going in although why I get 6 Bar sometimes is a bit concerning. I didn't put it in BTW.

View attachment 34232View attachment 34233
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Hi Roger if you are getting 6 bar sometimes and its not an expansion vessel problem then you might be getting a back feed through a tap fitted before the system pressure reducing valve sometimes kitchen sink tap is piped before the prv.
 
Problem with ring ccts is that cct can have a broken conductor behind a socket etc which results in 2 radial ccts which the homeowner is generally oblivious to - as everything is still working. Fuse/ MCB or RCBO might not adequately protect the cable as current carrying capacity of a radial is lower than a ring for a given cable generally, so you could end up with a cable melting or worse if heavily loaded.
 
jimmy s said:
Hi Roger if you are getting 6 bar sometimes and its not an expansion vessel problem then you might be getting a back feed through a tap fitted before the system pressure reducing valve sometimes kitchen sink tap is piped before the prv.
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I think you’re spot on there. The plumbing is a bit like a bowl of spaghetti
 
marineboy said:
My understanding is that ring mains with 2.5mm cable to replace radials with 4mm cable were introduced after WW2 specifically because of the shortage of copper.
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I think the reason for the UK adopting a ring instead of radials after the war is correct. However, I don't think the 4mm cable for radials is correct. The standard in the US for residential 15A circuits is 14AWG (about 2.08mm²). The standard in Germany for residential 16A circuits is 1.5mm².

Edit: Corrected to standardize terms.
 
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I think it's exactly that - 14AWG is 1.63mm diameter, and 2.5mm² cross-sectional area.
 
marineboy said:
My understanding is that ring mains with 2.5mm cable to replace radials with 4mm cable were introduced after WW2 specifically because of the shortage of copper.
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That and the fact that they were building (erecting) thousands of “prefabs, so the electrics might have been fitted hundreds of miles away from the final site.
IKEA were Jonny come latelys in the world of flat pack 🙂
 
Spectric said:
With a ring you have issues with bridging where someone has put another circuit in parallel with part of the existing ring or it becomes broken so now you have a 2.5mm cable protected by a 32 amp device which requires more current to disconnect than a 2.5mm cable can handle.
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Roy, the first part of your hypothetical scenario intrigues me. How does a second circuit in parallel arise issues? Is this an induced current possibility please?
I fully comprehend broken wire/bridging to second circuit, but the first, non-touching(?) possibility is defeating my grey matter.
Sam, no sparky.
 
Were the midges, cluster flies and clegs really that bad in hindsight !!

SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
How does a second circuit in parallel arise issues
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Because a Ring has to be just that, a ring where there is a loop of three conductors passing into and out of each socket and finaly back to the board. If it splits to loop into a socket and then rejoins further down the original ring then it is bridged and will fail statutory testing which one test is performed as below after performing a full circuit continuity test. Impedance X must equal impedance Y if it is an intact ring, unbridged and unbroken.

1751645780630.png
the equivalent circuit of the above is shown below where the wires between sockets are represented as resistances with the neutral side in parallel with the live side so at all sockets the measured resistance between live and neutral should be equal unless there is a problem.

1751645852424.png
 
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