Evening all, I'm doing a kitchen but the customer has chosen a brand of accessories that are rather expensive, to cut costs for them and so I don't have a load of sfcu on show im thinking of switching the appliances through contractors. They want to have local isolation above the worktop and not hidden away. I could then switch the coils with normal light switches. Anybody see any issues this may have? I normally use fuse carriers and dp switches in a grid but they are not available in the chosen range.
You are making a rod for your own back. The contactors will be noisy and hum or buzz. Fit the expensive stuff and let the customer pay, it is their choice.
You could use a contactor but not common for a domestic setup. As Bob Rathbone says, just ask the customer to purchase additional FCUs and isolator switches. Not sure how expensive the switches are, but the cotnactor arrangement and wiring may end up costing the same.
If you’re set on using remote contractors, make sure you get good quality items ‘cause as mentioned there will be some noise - the cheap carp particularly so. Looking further away there’s going to be maintenance needed.
Bear in mind that the switches will on all the time. That means the contactors will be energised 24hours:365 days a year. They’ll be on, humming away while your customer are away on holiday for a month. I wouldn’t want that in my house! why do you think you need a row of SFCUs anyways?
It's the preference of th customer that they want isolation. I could use a DP switch but the range in question that would be over £50 per switch from why they have told me. So they asked if I can find another solution. The cu is in the garage not the house so you'd never hear them.
Spen, don't do this, use the trade acceptable route and fit the £50 isolators. How much extra is the associated wiring and contactor going to cost, how much trouble is it going to give you in the future. Not all sparkies are as clever as you or I, keep it simple.
You can avoid hum issues by using solid state relays, they might need mounting on a heat sink though, very reliable and not too expensive
Thomas Nagy has just done a video along similar lines, personally I'm not sure he is all that clued up but each to their own. Might want to skip to about 8 minutes when he's stopped being a movie star.
If you do go down this path, make sure you fit the contactors with the flywheel diodes to stop back voltages off the coils ... some might come with them built in but others don’t. I’ve got something similar in my garage. I’ve put a contactor on a water heater in there. The contactor is linked to the light circuit so the water heater isn’t on unless I’m actually in there (with the lights on). It’s really just to stop me leaving it on...