Terminating old electrical cable in brick cavity walls Ask questions and find answers to many subjects relating to electrics and electrical work

[Mick991]

I live in an Edwardian house and when the last rewire was done, they basically rang a ring for the sockets under the 1st floor and vertically dropped single spurs down to the living room and dining rooms. These cables are chased in to the walls, however the sockets are externally box mounted. I am now in the process of gutting these 2 rooms and intend to put a proper ring under the floor and chased in sockets. My electrican will put in a new consumer unit for me and provide a connection to the new unit for my new ring (inspect and sign it off). The question is what can I use to terminate the old single spur cables that are in the walls, as I do not intend to pull them out as they are all plastered in. At some point in the future I will disconnect them from the ring on the 1st floor, but for the interim they will be live cables. Can I use 30A connector strips or do I need to chase in 30A Junction box? Whatever I use will be plastered over.

[ericmark]

You do have a problem. In order to be able to identify where a cable runs we need to have a socket, switch, or FCU on the end of the cable to show where it runs. So when one removes the socket you also need to remove the cable or at least make it dead.

It is normal to drop cables to ground floor and lift cables to first floor it is unusual to fit cables under the ground floor. Mainly as often it is concrete.

But the idea of running a ring with a series of spurs to sockets I have only seen in commercial premises where to stop volt drop the ring is larger than 2.5mm so accessible junction boxes are used.

The problem is today the electrician has to follow the regulations by the letter as every so many jobs one is randomly checked by his scheme operator. So to fit something even as a temporary measure if not complying is a big problem.

Ask your electrician. Something does not seem right and I wonder if you have something mixed up about what he intends to do.