When choosing lighting and other electrical items for your bathroom, there are certain regulations that need to be adhered to in the UK. These are to make sure that the items can cope with the level of moisture they are exposed to, for the safety of you and your family.

The 16th Edition of the Wiring Regulation of IEE offered as guidelines some zones to take into account when installing equipment in the shower or the bath. Those same zones were used with some changes in the 17th Edition of the IEE Wiring Regulation, which removed one zone and delegated the items within it to another. You will need to review the zones for electrical installations in your bath prior to installing any equipment in the bathroom or shower room, as well as any other room which may have high concentrations of moisture of wet areas.

In the Seventeenth Edition of the IEE Wiring the remaining zones are zone 0, zone 1, and zone 2:

ZONE 0 – The inner aspect of tub or shower; those areas in direct contact with water.

ZONE1 – Placement immediately above the area designated as ZONE 0, which has been limited cialis generic vs brand to 2.25 metres above the bottom of the shower or the bath area. This area also includes 1.5 metres horizontally from the centre of the shower outlet, up to the height of that outlet, or 2.25 metres, whichever is the higher of the two.

ZONE 2 – designated as any area which is outside of the other two zones, as well as “0.6m horizontally and up to 2.25m vertically”. The ZONE 2 area is also designated as any window that has a window sill which may be next to the bathing area.

NO ZONE area – since the portions beneath the bath can’t be reached without the use of tools, it is considered that this area is not within any zone.

Self Protection:

Shower and bathroom areas require any circuit to use the Residual Current Devices that don’t go over 30mA. This means that the electrical device must use that RCD even if you control it with a remote control or a switch.

Bathroom Equipment Moisture and Mechanical Protection:

Any electrical equipment offers some level of control for both mechanical and moisture protection. There is a number assigned to it which tells you where it fits into the overall scheme.

Known as an IP number, or an Ingress Protection number, it is used to tell you what the level of protection is.

The IP number is comprised of two numbers. The first number is the amount of mechanical protection factor, while the second number is equal to the moisture protection. For example with IP01, you would know that the mechanical protection was a 0 and the moisture protection was a factor of 1.

Equipment that doesn’t offer you an IP number shouldn’t be used in any highly moist environment, particularly a bathroom or shower room. The higher the numbers are, the better the protection is on both mechanical and moisture factors.

Bathroom items which will be given an IP number are as follows:

Electric Showers
Pumps for Showers
Lights
Heaters
Fans and Fan Units

If they do not have an IP number you may not use them in any bathroom, shower or moist environment.

There are also other classifications for the items. These classifications are SELV, PELV, and each number has information about the way that it can be used, and what it uses to power it. PELV denotes Protective Extra-Low Voltage, which is earth connected and low voltage, while SELV, Separated Extra-Low Voltage, is another kind of low voltage equipment which isolates input and output from each other.

The last and most important thing to remember about bathroom zones is that anything which is marked for a lower zone may be used in a higher zone, but the reverse is not true. That is to say, zone 2 marked items may not be used in any zone below zone 2, while zone 0 items can be used in zone 0, zone 1 or zone 2. Bear this in mind when choosing your bathroom lighting, and let the electrician worry about the rest.

Author Bio: Find out more about bathroom Kamagra Gold zones and lighting by visiting Cialis Professional href=”http://www.greatlightingshop.co.uk/”>www.greatlightingshop.co.uk.

Category: Home/Home Improvement
Keywords: bathroom zones, bathroom zone, baths, showers, shower room, zone 0, zone 1, zone 2