wow....one circuit feeding all the lights for a floor? I built and wired my house, and have a 200A service, that feeds a 40 breaker panel and I have only 3 spares. Stove,dryer (electric) are on seperate feeds. Washing machine has to be on a 20A dedicated circuit as well. I put my furnance on a seperate circuit. Then split out for bedrooms, and others all on seperate circuits....and yes, thats alot of wire to home run back to the panel BUT then rooms are isolated. Certain rooms do not need alot of power, like bedrooms. My office is on its own. So is my workroom. Kitchen has three feeds...two for outlets, the other for dishwasher and disposal. Outside lighting on its own. Bathrooms GFI are daisychained, but each bathroom has its own GFI, just all on its own dedicated circuit. Basically, when a builder does a house, and hires an electrician to wire it...they do it as cheap and easy as they can, in order to make a better profit. When you do it yourself, you can afford to make it just the way you want...nothing overloaded, circuits isolated, and never worry about how you wish it was done because you did it (blame yourself?). Unlike internet, where you can always use wireless....cant do that with power. And yes, I did run CAT5E to every room except the bathrooms.....(hmmm....emebedded controller for a toilet to monitor water useage, flushing...naaaaaaaa). And in general, the material is cheap when you buy in bulk, its the labor that usually drives the price up. Howard Winter wrote: Alan, On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:36:45 -0000, Alan B. Pearce wrote: >... > I just cannot get used to the ring main system in the UK. having grown > up with star wiring in NZ, where the standard practice was to have adjacent > rooms on different lighting circuits, so if the fuse blew you at least had > some spill over light from an adjacent room to find your way to a torch. > Instead in the UK the whole house blacks out .... Not true! Lighting is always on separate circuits from power (unless someone who doesn't know better got creative :-) The "ring final", to give it its proper name, is only used on power circuits feeding sockets. Lighting is usually done on a "loop-in" system, which daisy-chains from each light fitting to the next, but doesn't connect back at the end, and fixed appliances like immersion heaters, electric cookers and so on, are usually on dedicated radial circuits. Are you saying that in NZ there's a separate supply cable leading back to the distribution board from the lights in each room, and a separate fuse for each? That sounds terribly hard work (and expensive!). Most houses here have separate circuits for upstairs and downstairs lights, but if the house is small enough (mine is) then there's just one lighting circuit, protected by a 6A MCB. So obviously all the lights on a circuit go down at once, bur the only thing which would take down *everything* in the house would be if there's a house-wide RCD, or you blow the service fuse (the supplier's property, and you have to go seriously mad to blow that!). Cheers, Howard Winter St.Albans, England -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist --------------------------------- Don't pick lemons. See all the new 2007 cars at Yahoo! Autos. -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist