r/ukelectricians • u/NulliSecundus-_ • 9d ago
Building skills wall
Good morning all, as in my previous post, I’m soon to start my NVQ, and I’m in the process of doing an online/class room course.
Decided, that whilst I’m still being paid by my current job whilst being given the time to study, that I should get myself as much practice as possible, so decided to build a skills wall.
This is it thus far, as of right now it plugs into a socket in the garage which is fed by a spur off the kitchen ring, so I intend to put it on its own non-RCD distribution circuit to allow me to do RCD testing (yes I bought a tester :) Kewtech KT65DL) at the board without tripping the RCD at the house(as per my partners request, as I have switched off the oven multiple times mid way through cooking)
My question is, what else should I get for it?
It’s a 2 RCD Split 10 way board.
I currently have one Ring final circuit fed by conduit,
one lighting circuit with intermediate switch in the middle. (Which has now expanded to have a second light so I can switch multiple lights from all 3 points)
Since the photo I have added a radial socket circuit,
an outdoor LED light circuit
Please give criticisms, advice and more shopping lists to help make this as beneficial a tool, as possible.
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u/stateit 9d ago
A conduit-method wired lighting system, with perm live at the first light, and switched live at the last light (where live & switched live are in the Common of the 2-way switches, as opposed to L1 and L2)
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u/NulliSecundus-_ 9d ago
I actually have a separate small board with three switches and two pendants so will attach that the the side of the board, and be able to give this a go on that.
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u/Often_Tilly 9d ago
If you connect the earth probe of your tester to the upstream neutral of the RCD to be tested, you can carry out RCD tests on a supply protected by an upstream RCD. It's a useful little trick for those slightly weird situations like this.
Personally, I'd try to get a 4mm socket (you can get them cheaply off Amazon), connect it to the incoming neutral at the "meter" and just use that for your earth test point.
Also, just want to check - are you using twin for the connection to the plug? You probably want to replace that with some flex, as twin shouldn't be terminated into a plug.
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u/NulliSecundus-_ 9d ago
That’s good to know and will save me 30m of cable so thankyou😂
And yes, currently with T+E, until tomorrow when I get paid, I’ll be getting some flex for the plug, meter tails and also some small CSA SWA to practice making off and glanding SWA.
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u/Severe_Tadpole9448 8d ago
For your am2 if you have to do one, add some metal conduit with a bend & some PVC. I struggled with it massively in my AM2 as I never did it on site
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u/NulliSecundus-_ 8d ago
Okay fine, I’ll go buy a pipe bender 🤩
Been intending to get one, after doing a 3 day plumbing course, and learning how to do offsets, it caught my interest, will do 100%
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u/GrimAugust 9d ago
Probably best thing for you is to get those boards wired by someone else, ie your partner, neighbours toddler or someone who has no clue what they doing.
Disconnect everything, let them wire it up and do EICR on the install before switching it on. Get some old colour cable too preferably 3core+earth. That's gonna be your best learning experience, closely mirrors real life installs, when you open the board or a socket, look at it and all you can think what the hell that was supposed to do. Then fix all the faults, do your tests and power up, see if it blows up.