Thread: requirements for a 15a circuit

Thats the beauty of the internet, ordinary people can get the help they need without some elitist gronk overcomplicating a simple issue.

Thank you for raising this point. Yes, the beauty of the Internet where any twit can pass himself off as an expert. Hell, I've done it myself. All you need is a reference book on the subject and you can post seemingly intelligent answers. I might even be a 12 year old school boy for all you know.

But hey, if you want people like that advising you on how to wire up your shed, that's your problem. Still don't understand why the BIL can't answer your question for you. There might not even be a BIL, how would we know? But I reckon I'd trust him more than an anonymous bunch of blokes on the Internet.

Good luck with it anyway. Hope it all goes well. Just out of interest, are you following Keith's advice, or the advice you got on the other forum, because they seem to be a bit different?

Originally Posted by 19brendan81

.... I AM TALKING ABOUT PUTTING SOME FRIGGEN CONDUIT ON A SHED WALL!!!!!!....

What size conduit are you going to use?

Originally Posted by RVK 355

Has anyone got a proper answer?

i am curious to know, as my shed has a 15A out let with a 16A breaker which trips of reguarly when running my TIG at higher amps.

id like to upgrade the breaker, but not sure if the cable is up to the task.

My 15 amp GPO used to be the same except it had the old wired fuse...Lucky I had some spare 30 amp wire handy and the welder no longer melted the fuse wire after that....

When I got the phase converter installed the electrician who did the job replaced the whole fuse box and installed 20 amp breakers on both the 15 amp and 10 amp circuits...My 250 amp MIG will drop the breaker down when running it on high settings... Bit annoying..

I might glue the 20 amp breaker up so it can't click down..

Bit annoying..

Less annoying than having to put out a fire I dare say

My sparky says I could put a 30a breaker on my 15amp circuit if I needed it, but you have to be sure the wiring back to the supply will handle it. Obviously they create a bit of headroom in the installation, so a circuit protected by 20a breaker could probably handle more. It's just a matter of how much headroom you have. Naturally you want the breaker tripping before you get anywhere near the capacity of the cable. Because he wired the shed (and the whole house) he knows what he can hang off the cable to the shed.

What would be do without you Silent? You're always such good value. Please don't disappear forever to the other forum; it'd just be too quiet here.

Are you kidding? And miss out on gems like this?

Originally Posted by silentC

Rocket surgery? Rocket science with a bit of brain surgery thrown in?

OK monty, since you popped your head up. There are three issues here:

1. What he is proposing to do is illegal.

Jay walking is illegal too but millions of australians do it daily. People break laws everyday and I'm sure you've broken your share. Oh that's right it doesn't count right :lol:

Originally Posted by silentC

2. This is a public forum and anyone can read it and respond. How do you know that the information you get is correct?

Oh no close the internet, close this forum how does anyone konw anything is correct.. ZOMG!!

It's called being part of a community and sourcing information from multiple sources which correlate and using a bit of common sense. It's rather simple really.

Originally Posted by silentC

3. But for me, the main issue is whether this forum should be encouraging people to break the law, even if we think it is a silly law. When someone asks an electrical question, should we answer it, assuming that we know the answer, even though the person is obviously intending to break the law?

That is your own personal decision to make. It isn't breaking the law talking about how it should be done. That is where you confuse the situation and convieniently twist it to the way you want it to work. It's no more illegal than me discussing various tax evasion schemes or a current affairs program like 4-corners going into the details of how a major scam was pulled off. The act is illegal, not a discussion of how to go about doing the act.
Thought police can go and take a hike.

Originally Posted by silentC

It wont surprise me if you answer yes to that one by the way. Quite a few people do. All I am doing is suggesting the smart approach,

Actually you aren't. Confusing and confounding him is not the smart approach at all. It's a rather stupid approach. If you where truly worried about taking the smart approach you would tell him exactly what he needs to know to do the job safely and then at the end say that he should get an electrician in just to be safe. Posts that try to overcomplicate simple matters are only smart approaches to your hip pocket because all you see is a loss of a job as your motivation whether you care to admit it or not.
Whether you like to admit it or not restricting information doesn't stop anyone from actually doing something they have already decided to do. It's like the stoneage arguments that we shouldn't tell kids about safe sex because if we tell them to wait till they are 18 everything will be nice and safe :shakes head:
Attitudes like yours are part of the problem, not the solution.

What I would love to see in this country and which is employed elsewhere is you do the electrical work. Someone comes and examines it and signs off on it for a reasonable fee and everyone is above board. Maybe eventually that system will be the way to go once australia wakes up to itself. Hell I would love it if it applied to everyone including tradies because I know for a fact a few I've employed produced unsafe modifications which were designed to reduce their costs and the time they spent. No one was ever going to check them up. Then when the #### hits the fan it'll be blamed on a diy'er because no professional would of done that

Originally Posted by 19brendan81

On this very forum, you all happily talk about buying very old second hand pieces of machinery that have no safety features, would NEVER pass modern standards and could rip your arm off in a second....yet what type of cable to buy in order to put a 15A circuit in my shed is too dangerous to even mention! Get a grip!!!

You have to realise we have some tradies who are only interested in protecting their jobs and hide behind the guise of "safety". There is no such group monetarily invested in the other sections. I think you expressed yourself very well above at the stupidity of it all. The only way to counteract these trade interests is to do as you have done and post the answer for everyone else to see that they did not want anyone to see and providing the information that they wanted kept hidden. Thankyou for doing that.

I suggest you head on over to the New Zealand sites who basically have the standards and are 99% the same as ours and use that as a guide. The New Zealand government at least has an ounce of common sense by allowing these standards to be publicly accessible for free for home owners to actually do some of the work themselves. Australia needs to wake up to itself in that respect.

The bottom line here is that the initial question is a little too open ended. It's like asking people on this forum if the mole on my arm is safe or a melanoma. You need to ask a sparkie who knows the local regulations and is hands on and on-site. There are quite a few sparkies who contribute to these forums, and I'm sure that they're not all that keen to offer advice without looking at the conditions and getting a proper brief.

Originally Posted by Rossluck

The bottom line here is that the initial question is a little too open ended. It's like asking people on this forum if the mole on my arm is safe or a melanoma. You need to ask a sparkie who knows the local regulations and is hands on and on-site. There are quite a few sparkies who contribute to these forums, and I'm sure that they're not all that keen to offer advice without looking at the conditions and getting a proper brief.

Then the questions should be about asking him the right questions to obtain those details and provide him with an answer. It's quite obvious from the posters against this that there is no such desire to answer the question at all but just bury it. We all know the reasons why, money.

If the wire is not smoking then you can pull more amps out of it

Originally Posted by montiee

For the amount of effort spent telling him to ask his BIL you could of answered him 10x over. :lol: In the end he got his answer and that's what he is going to use. When will you tradies learn that these tactics don't stop anyone. :shakes head:

I can't give him an accurate answer, because I need a minimum amount of information to give the correct answer. He hasn't given it, so I asked. Sorry, won't do it again. It's much easier to make the assesment onsite, when you know the installation conditions. If he cares enough to tell me, I'll confirm or correct his current information.

Originally Posted by blonk

I can't give him an accurate answer, because I need a minimum amount of information to give the correct answer. He hasn't given it, so I asked. Sorry, won't do it again. It's much easier to make the assesment onsite, when you know the installation conditions. If he cares enough to tell me, I'll confirm or correct his current information.

Oh yes you were being ever so helpful by sprinking in some genuine questions with some that really questionable ones..
Let me take one example

Originally Posted by block

What is the maximum voltage drop,

Yes a electrician is going to run some wire and go through all that effort to feed it to the destination, then measure the voltage drop and go, oh bugger too much, I'll just rip out all the work I've just done and redo it with bigger cable. Yeh right. That's a sign of a complete amatuer. Given the standards of wire (guage) it shouldn't be that hard to work out if you do it for a living given the length of the run and diameter of the wire what the predicted voltage drop will be.

That is what I mean by overcomplicating the situation. As a pro you should already know for the length of run using what wire what the voltage drop will be. You shouldn't be asking what it is if you are a pro and doing it for a living as you claim to be. It's just one of those tactics that pro's use to put people off because alot of people wouldn't know how to measure a voltage drop. Hell if he hasn't run the wire how can he tell you the measured voltage drop. Right there it was obvious you were just pulling out anything you could think of to make the situation sound complicated and putting him in a situation where he had no hope of being able to answer you.

Jesus Monty, I wouldn't read a series of posts that long if they were written by someone whose opinion I actually cared about.

From what I have read you seem to have an issue with tradespeople in general. All this talk of protecting income and unnecessary over complication. Smacks of someone with an axe to grind to me.

It's really quite simple mate. You cannot debate that doing your own wiring is illegal. The facts are there. You can go on about what you think a tradesman would/should/could do all you like but it doesn't change that fact. That is the system we have to work in. If you think encouraging people you've never met to do it themselves is responsible, well I can only disagree. I think you miss the point in every way.

Maybe you've looked in the odd meter box or done your own bit of illegal wiring in the past and now you think that qualifies you to judge what's involved. My personal opinion is that you haven't got a clue. I think it's amusing that you're trying to take on qualified sparkys based on whatever it is you think you know. Here's something you will understand: LOL mate LOL.

So I will continue to recommend people to speak to an electrician when they ask questions like this. You can do what you want, but make sure you make it very clear that you are not qualified to give advice, just in case some clown actually listens to you and burns down his house.