HELP, my shop is a MESS

[Mike Ginn]

Ouch. That is so easily done and needs to be a warning to everyone. My experience of fires in industry is that heaters of various types are nearly always the cause of fires especially when there is combustible material present. PVC is probably the worst due to the corrosive smoke. Due to my sensitivity on this subject, when I built my latest shop I organised the electrics so that circuits could easily be switched off using 13A fused metal clad switches. So my lathe, compressor, various lathe lights, oil pump and grinders are all switched from a single switch. The 2.5mm wiring for this switch goes directly to the consumer board and a 32A RCD. I do have an electric heater. Its oil filled and never operated at more than 2kW. In this way there is no likelihood of heating up the socket contacts. Note that I am UK based and we use probably the best sockets in the world having a large contact area and good mechanical wire screw clamps.

FYI I fixed 6inch plastic trunking around the top of my shop and then drop cables down to the sockets. There are no cable joints in the trunking and the consumer unit is metal clad.

Thanks for sharing your experience Tony.

Mike

 

[metalmangler]

Note that I am UK based and we use probably the best sockets in the world having a large contact area and good mechanical wire screw clamps.

One thing to remember about UK double sockets is that, although the individual sockets are rated at 13 amps, the double socket unit as a whole is rated at only 20 amps. I l.earned this the hard way (fan heater and oil radiator on same double socket), but fortunately limited the damage to just the sockets and a bit of wall.

 

[Lloyd-ss]

I plugged in a (plastic welding kit) heat iron to do a plastic bumper repair. A few minutes later, after being distracted, I pushed it back on my bench TO MAKE ROOM TO WORK. I then left, forgetting the iron was warming up. It eventually overheated, set the bench on fire, and the rest is history.

Tony, that picture is so sad and I am glad no one was hurt and that it didn't get worse. It will help us all to be more careful in our shops (and everywhere). Thank you for posting that.

Here is a thread I did a while back about a close call I had in my shop. This almost seems trivial compared to yours, but it was headed in that direction. You made a statement about the UK electrical receptacles being among the best in the world. That certainly isn't the case in the US. But ultimately, it is our personal responsibility to pay attention to our environment.

Maybe if I start to think about a neat shop being a safer shop, it will help me with the clutter issue. I too am always pushing stuff out of the way to get some bench top space.
Lloyd

Almost burned my shop down and didn't even know it

SCARY PICTURES Years ago I had my 1 HP lathe plugged into a nice safe 20 amp circuit in my shop. Some things were piled in front of the outlet so I couldn't see the plug. I was doing some long periods of heavy work on the lathe for several nights. Never gave it a second thought. Then, maybe a...

www.homemodelenginemachinist.com

 

[Mike Ginn]

Hi Metalmangler (good name!)
You are correct. I think with all electrics there is detail which is overlooked. The capacity of a ring vs a spur is a good example. As a matter of policy I keep the max load to 2kW on each spur. The MCB is rated at 32A. I find that most electrical equipment is less than 2A so I try to balance the loadings. Clearly if the max number of 13A sockets were at max capacity on a ring the cable would fry although the MCB should trip! (BS7671 allows an unlimited number of sockets provided the area that the ring serves is less than 100 x 100m)
For the avoidance of doubt I only have one 13A double socket on each spur or there is a fused switch before several sockets. The total number of sockets is 30. I configured it this way so that I could have a dedicated MCB per spur per circuit.
Mike