Home DIY

IPX4 is allowed in zone 1 for bathrooms. IPX7 for zone 0. Generally that means IP44 lights in the ceiling are fine, Zone 0 is actually in the bath or shower tray. First digit (4) means protection against objects >1mm, second digit (4) means no harmful effects from splashing water. I would say that speaker grille achieves that. In any case there's no way to reach live voltage without puncturing the speaker.

It does require the bathroom to be 30ma RCD protected though which is in part why the regulations have been adjusted.

The whole IP rating in bathroom business is a bit of a electricians cliche.

Steam over a long period of time would be the best reason to have a bathroom rated speaker, yours would resist water jets so it sounds like they would survive outdoors. Nothing wrong with over engineering, except the cost. You do still get a lot of professionals insisting on IP ratings way above requirement, I guess that leads to the general population believing that's what's required.

Odd thing is the electricians guides to part p and BS 7671 don't contain an IP rating chart.

The other thing is the second number (liquid protection) tends to dictate the dust rating, so a submersible light (IPX7) must be dust tight (IP6X)

Our bathroom is about 1/10th the size of diable's and gets full of steam (the whole thing is a wet room) and to be honest our whole building project is over-engineered anyway. They weren't that pricey though, Cambridge Audio jobs from Richer Sounds.

As I said I don't know what I'm talking about and was just curious - didn't mean to make @diable panic ;)

Has the radiator just stopped working or have you just noticed? Is it only one rad or could it on a separate heating zone within the boiler...
Is it on the end of the pipe run?
Turning the others off is deffo the quickest way to check flow, balancing them is a case of narrowing the rad valves closest to the boiler and gradually having them more open the further down the pipe loop.

Turned everything off and it's got luke warm but not hot - I noticed yesterday evening but pretty sure it was going on last week.

Are we talking a 1/4 turn clockwise and just work them until it gets hot?

murder in the red barn

Got a towel rail that does very little to combat dampness in our bathroom.

Can I get a wider one without lifting the tiles up? Will a 90 degree bend / extension allow me to connect one to the same pipes currently but double the width?

1 Attachment

Could you go taller?

Only by about 10mm, there's a windowsill just out of shot.

Damp towels + towel radiator = damp bathroom.
Two choices:
Vent warm, humid air out the bathroom.
Dehumidifier to dry the warm, humid bathroom.

Also get a white radiator. Better heat transfer than chromed.
http://www.screwfix.com/c/heating-plumbing/towel-radiators/cat830996#category=cat830996&brand=flomasta&productheight=1500_mm&productwidth=600_mm

I didn't turn the mains off when changing my extractor fan, figured as long as I didn't cross wires I'd be fine. Wrong. But then the lad who did the job properly didn't turn off the electric either, how's that work? Magnets?

Finally finished my door way. Lost interest below knee height. Not perfect but it'll do.

1 Attachment

You might have had it switched on when tried to put the wires in? Hard to understand why anyone wouldn't switch the power off to the circuit they're working on.

You could set all the other trvs to 1 and see if it gets hot, otherwise try diables suggestion of manipulating the trv mech with the cap off it, sometimes they're stuck but I think your installation is quite new.

I'm a big fan of centrifugal, err...

Bathroom extractors that actually do something are a revelation though, really.

Question for you as an ex-electrician or someone else who knows this stuff: why when I turn off my lighting ring on the fusebox is there still power in some of the cables, even when the circuit is turned off and the lights don't work?

I need to move a light switch sightly and was hoping not to have to turn all the power off.

Shared neutrals. Usually found on two way switching.

Or possibly induction in the circuits. Do you have fluorescent lighting?

Have you used a multimeter to check it's at 230V or a test stick?

What indicates there's still power? Even if you've isolated a circuit then touch a neutral & earth it will trip the main RCD on the consumer unit (I think).

Search for "ghost voltage" if you want to know more about that phenomenon. Otherwise as others have said, it could be shared neutrals which are often found in hallways, especially if you have an upstairs and downstairs lighting circuit. Though the fact that the lights don't work would suggest it's not 240v.

The individual circuits Neutral and Earth are connected in a typical RCD setup. So touching Neutral and Earth with only the Live disconnected (i.e. single MCB switched off) will cause a parallel path to Earth from the Neutrals on the other circuits. This disrupts the balance in the RCD and trips it.

The current regulation is leaning towards RCBO's which protect each circuit individually, they are more expensive so they're not that popular with jobbing electricians who like to stay competitive on price and don't want the material costs eating into profits. They should be the future though, it's probably only a question of time before they're regulation.

Ah, right angles it is then. Have you considered a proper radiator with a rail surround? Get less trapped air issues building up and knocking out half the rad power.

Pretty sure I had it (they light off).
I didn't switch off as the wife was in the middle of a TV show and I would have had to get a ladder to get to the fuse box... figured it would be fine... figured wrong.

Leaky boilers eh. Always when it's cold.

Thanks all. A non-contact voltage testing pen is suggesting it is still live. You might think ah well that's the tester (I know not to rely on them and should really be using a voltage tester but it has been totally reliable so far) but the lighting circuit also covers our shared hall and I replaced a lightswitch there recently and it was the same deal (I had to turn the whole fusebox off to get negative readings from the testing pen).

So I guess that means it's not ghost voltage? Is shared neutrals the most likely scenario? It's not two way switched though?

We've just had the consumer unit replaced and wiring sorted out so rather than just not wanting to reset clocks etc. would like to know if it's not meant to be like that.

How far does the switch need to move?

About 10cm 5cm. It's an OCD thing really but it's bothering me!

Testing pen spec says it only detects 50v or higher.

Hmm.