Realising a Dream - 11 – Power Light Heat

The various options and possibilities of customising this aspect of my shed are discussed and the implementation outlined.

Warning: It is up to you to be aware of the necessary regulations applicable to your property and adhere to safe working practices. I shall not be held responsible for any mishap due to implementing what I describe here. That is solely your responsibility.

Sorry, but it had to be said, back to the subject in hand.

Power

Phase 2 of the electrics was the development of the initial installation to suit the purpose of each of the three rooms.

Three sets of circuits were implemented, power, light and heating, each with their own breaker/isolation switch in the consumer unit within the building. From this consumer unit there is a separate feed for each of three heater spurs, one in the workshop and two in the railway room. The intention was that a fault with one heater tripping a breaker would not shut down the remaining two heaters.

Power distribution in the garden shed room and workshop are on a conventional ring main, whereas the railway room is connected to the ring main by fused and switched connection units (FCU) as two spurs. These FCUs are placed one at each side of the connecting door within the railway room. One spur goes clockwise to the railway room external doorway and the other anticlockwise.

The purpose of doing it this way is so at the end of a session I only have two switches to operate to completely shut down the entire railway, there are numerous power supplies dotted around the railway. Similarly only two to turn on again at the start.

I also made a point of all power and heater wiring to be within surface mounted trunking so no cable is buried in the cavity of the walls and sockets may be easily moved, added or removed without damaging the walls. As the walls are surfaced with plaster board it would soon get messy, cutting holes, moving sockets and filling holes even if the sockets were surface mounted.

In practice when the main baseboard framing was erected some sockets were obscured by legs, however some slackness of the cable within the trunking allowed sockets to be slid left or right and only the trunking cover required modifying.

The trunking was screwed to the studwork through the plasterboard and not directly attached to the plaster board. It is not a pleasant material to directly fix to even with specialist fixings, as it can crumble and have voids.

Lighting

The ceiling would be low at 80 inches due to the maximum height limit placed on the building, ceiling beam depth and insulation, but still high enough for fitting three 6ft fluorescent tube fittings in the railway room and 4ft fittings in the other rooms well clear of my head (70 inches and shrinking).

For the two larger rooms the lights were wired for two way switching, pull switches being at the doorways of each room. A single pull switch for the garden shed room next to the exterior door.

Lighting cables were routed in the void between the ceiling plasterboard and the ceiling beams keeping them out of harm’s way of any curious animal that gets up there, squirrels and mice like to chew things which can result in fires.

To avoid drilling through beams to route wiring across the beams surface mounted D profile conduit was attached to the ceiling. Not very cosmetic but it must be remembered this is very much a utility scenario, where function can override aesthetics, and besides I don't spend my time in there looking at the ceiling!

Using pull switches also eliminated the need for the lighting wiring to run down the walls, either surface or within, and for those next to exterior doors it is much safer when entering on a wet day.

In the unlined garden shed room the light fitting, switch and wiring were attached to the roof frame which was earthed to the consumer unit during the basic electrical installation.

Later in the development of the railway the use of 3 fluorescent tubes in the railway room would become impractical due to the height of some baseboards and the multiple track levels. Too much would be in shadow so a change of lighting technology was required, a move to 3 types of LED illumination was made to enable lighting to be easily optimised to suit the location.

Using LED lighting significantly reduces the hazard from fitting mains cables under baseboards (e.g. drilling through from above), and the heat generated by mains lamps causing issues. Also their phsyical bulk relative to LED equipment can limit their application where low headroom is available.

Location specific lighting and safety are a distinct advantages to using LED lamps even though the outlay can be higher than using fluorescent or filament lamps.

This I will cover in more detail when building the multi-level baseboards.

Heating

Originally, when attempting to calculate the insulation required that I would need storage heaters using E7 or similar, but first I needed to confirm this as essential before making a significant outlay on them.

Two 3kW free standing convector heaters were set up in the railway room and one 1.5kW free standing convector heater in the workshop room to confirm insulation effectiveness.

I monitored heating energy consumption using an Efergy monitor attached to the heater cable from the consumer unit within the house. Max/min thermometers and a humidity gauge were placed in the insulated rooms. This allowed me to check the effectiveness of the insulation and heating and judge the best balance of temperature to cost.

After a couple of years with these heaters running at half heat settings I was able to confirm that the insulation was effective enough not to need upsizing to expensive storage heaters after all.

Quite the reverse in fact, I downsized the two 3kW convectors in the railway room to two 500W skirting board heaters to which I added a room thermostat to control them as one heater. The heaters were placed in diagonally opposite positions within the railway room so that heating was spread evenly. The thermostat being sited centrally.

Two distinct advantages of using skirting board heaters, firstly, they are safer, the elements are akin to an electric kettle, scenic materials dropping on an open element can ignite. Secondly, they could be mounted to the mainframe of the layout which meant less clutter and leads on the floor.

However as they are connected to one heater feed for thermostatic control protection was required to prevent total heating loss due to failure of one, so an earth leakage breaker socket was fitted for each heater.

Dimplex 500W Skirting Board Heater







The heating power cable is run through 20mm conduit to keep it well separated from all the low voltage wiring on its path across the central baseboard framework (which was not shown for clarity in part 10).

In the workshop the 1.5kW convector heater running on the 750W setting was retained.

Heating Operation

The railway room’s skirting board heaters are run with the joining door open from autumn through to spring, and as winter sets in the joining door is closed and the workshop is independently heated with its own convector heater running at 750W.

There has never been an instance of the heating being on continuously and the internal temperature dropping below a setting of 17C. During the summer with the doors open it can rise to 25C, if too hot closing the doors keeps it cool, after all the insulation is bidirectional.

Summary

Lining it out, including studwork, insulation, plaster boarding, internal electrics and flooring was a task which took me nearly 12 months single handed. It was a significant DiY task, which although daunting at the time was satisfying to my DiY self.

I hope this has provided some useful insights for anyone contemplating taking the step of creating a dedicated shed to realise their dream. Whether you DiY or employ the necessary trades, having some knowledge will help you get the job done as you want it done, not as someone else wants it done!


Next, and about time some will say, the railway, Jim

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