The "trunked" system mentioned in an earlier post was sometimes used in old buildings here. It's a similar idea, in some ways, to a ring main. Long gone though.
Consumer Unit (small number of high rated diazed fuses) feeding:
Very heavy radial cables that fed zones (similar diameter to cooker circuits.. 40-50amps)
Each room in a zone had a little fuse box (consumer unit) at ceiling level (usually consealed very neatly) with a small number of diazed fuses on a board inside serving lights, sockets (usually schuko or sometimes BS546) and occasionally individual fuses for fixed appliences like heaters.. It avoided having to run endless cables back to the consumer unit and I guess it was useful when wiring big old georgian and victorian houses that never had electricity and would have used gas lighting until the 1920s and 30s and even later in some cases!
It's actually quite a neat system, often metal ducting for cables followed the same routes as the gas pipes they replaced. This old pipework consisted of larger trunks tapped off to lights and heaters with small feeder pipes.. (a bit like spurs)
(Gas lights were still in fairly common use as late as the 1950s!)
I presume this system was used elsewhere?
[This message has been edited by djk (edited 05-18-2003).]
