Consumer Unit for cooker

[camioneur]

In the kitchen we have one really thick wire coming out of the wall from he main cooker wall switch. We have wired the oven to this outlet and then hard wired the hob to the same connections in the oven. New kichen and new hob later, MFI been out to mend faulty fan oven and condemned cooker and hob intall as they don't have seperate 13 amp fuse protection for each appliance and say it shouldn't be hard wired at all as it might cause a fire if all rings and oven switched on together!

My question then is this,. Is it possible to put a seperate little consumer unit or similar behind the cooker or in a cupboard next to it and wire the unit to the existing thick wire and then seperately to the oven and hob. Would that give me seperate 13 amp protection and keep the electrician from MFI happy?

[raysparx1]

Is the Hob a Gas hob with electric ignition ?

[camioneur]

No, it's an electric oven with a seperate electric hob, one of the ceramic instant heat ones

[raysparx1]

The easiest way round this is to have a cooker unit put in, the Hob can be hard wired into the cooker unit,use a 6mm twin & earth for this then put heat resisting flex onto the oven and plug the oven into the socket outlet on the cooker unit, job done, why couldn't he tell you this ?

[camioneur]

thanks for that. I asked about a consumer unit as I didn't want to disturb the new tiles in the kitchen and thought i could bury one in the cupboard. Wouldn't I have to have a cooker unit exposed on the wall? Also, how thick a wire do I need from the oven to the socket as presumably you need to wire this into an ordinary type 13 amp plug?

[camioneur]

Is this the type of thing you mean ray?

http://www.toolstation.com/?r=f&feature=51092

[raysparx1]

Can you get the cooker cable into a base unit ? if you can,you can put the cooker unit in there, I would use a 2.5mm heat resisting flex for oven

[raysparx1]

Yes, that is it,the hob connects directly into unit and the oven plugs into socket

[raysparx1]

If you do put one in the cupboard,make sure you get a Pattress that is 42mm deep

[camioneur]

You're a star mate, thanks very much

[raysparx1]

Hey no probs, good luck, if he says the fuse or mcb is overated at 30 amp ,just change it for a smaller rated 20 or 25 amp, I think you can still get 25 amp.

[Rosstaylor]

I don't understand why the mfi guy is saying you need 13a protection for each appliance. In a normal situation you would use a cooker control unit for a cooker or electric hob and they don't have fuses in at all. If he insists on both appliances being fused at 13a then why don't you just wire the 6.0mm cable into a normal double socket in an adjacent unit and put 2.5mm flex and a plug top on each appliance on plug them into the socket? This way you won't have to change the breaker in your fusebox.

[raysparx1]

The thing is Rosstaylor, I don't care what the MFI man says re:the Hob, it is Hard wired into a cooker unit the oven plugs in, The oven will only be rated at about 3kw max, if the hob was plugged in it would melt the socket as the as a couple of the rings on the hob would be rated at 3kw which is 13 amps each, so if you switched all four rings on, whoops,another socket burnt out and possible fire. Ray

[camioneur]

I think the guy from MFI just wanted to show his knowledge off to the wife who didn't really grasp any of what he was saying. I was getting it second hand when I got home from work. He did however make her sign 2 pieces of paper stating that he had informed her of a dangerous install, I've now put a cooker unit in the cupboard, hard wired the hob to it and connected the oven to the cooker unit socket via a 13 amp plug. It's all working fine and only cost about �15.00 so thanks very much for advice. Wife and I now sleeping properly again! Cheers