Right,

 

I work for a call centre and we are going to be fitting new systems in a new premises shortly.

 

What I need to know is the load limit for earth leakage and how many pc's I can put on a circuit.

 

As a guide I know 240v x 32amps gives me wattage and at that only 80% is a safety margin to use so about 6144 watts per 32amp breaker.

 

we are going to have three pods of 12 pc's each with a maximum wattage of 255 with no other devices.

 

6 pc's per side will connect in a daisy chain style to a 13amp plug which I think is safe and 10 would be my limit.

 

I plan to split the pods each having its own 32amp breaker so max 12 pc's per circuit.

 

Is all above sound and is there anything regarding earth leakage I should know that could cause the system to trip ?

 

Cheers

 

lee

How do you mean 6 pcs to a 13a plug?

sorry, each desk has a power strip that daisy chains to the next.

 

and these are proper power strips for office use rather than trailing sockets

 

at the end is a 13amp plug.

 

With a max 6 desks daisy chained

Is you circuits protected by an rcd? If so this is where earth leakage will come into play typically you will get around 3.5mA per pc you would get 5 pcs before it would trip. Most computer circuits we work on do not have rcds to eliminate this problem. It's not an area I deal a lot with though.

nothings in yet so just planning best way of doing it all

What items will be at each station just a monitor and a pc?

If it was me i would install a ring circuit for each pod protected by a 32a mcb on each ring have a double socket for each pc

So heres our floor plan and it shows two pods of 12 and two pods of 8.

 

if you can imagine each side of the pods are seperate and are joined together with one 13amp plug.

 

Each desk has 4 sockets each with a max amps of 5 as each socket is also fused.

 

i'm installing 50x100mm dado trunking around the outer wall that will have two compartments; one for cat5 data cable and ther other for 2.5 t&e.

 

i'm all clued up enough to do the install but it will be sanity checked later by a qualified engineer.

 

a seperate distro box will be put in the electrical area where i can run the power cables back to.

 

So when running a seperate circuit back there will only be one double socket point at each end point so will i double the cable

as if its a ring ?

 

 

 

 

you do know that if you are not a qualified electrician and something goes wrong with the install in that office you will be held responsible & be taken to court!

Also a qualified electrician will not sign someone else's work off, as there putting there name to a that install. I stopped this work years ago because of the regulations & h/s departments.

The law says if your not qualified don't do it!

But it does state that a competent person can carry out the work not a qualified person so if he installs it and get his work tested and verified by someone who deems it ok then he can do it.

But the fact is i am Qualified Electrician to 15th Edition Regs and a full apprenticeship and 20 years of experience behind me, The fact is H & S is so tight these days if someone gets an injury from your install inspected or not that JUDGE will look at YOU the installer & the electrician who passed it! Also the JUDGE WILL ASK YOU FOR YOUR QUALIFICATIONS WHAT WILL YOU SAY WHEN YOU HAVE JUST KILLED SOMEONE! This is why i got out of the game because of people thinking that can do it when there not QUALIFIED TO DO IT!!!!

Fair enough he asked for help so I was giving it since I'm a fully qualified electrician to 17th edition

I am a competent person on electrical engineering and i would say qualified too and its nearly an ocupational route i went down.

 

As far as electrical work goes i'll pull a few cables and attach some sockets, the rest ie installing a distro box will be done by

what i called a certified engineer.

 

I'm not asking someone else to come in and sign my work off as if they did it so not breaking any laws here.

 

The only bit i'm quering in this thread is earth leakage for pc's, i well understand voltage, amps and wattage and limits but

adding many pc's to a single circuit has implications i'm not 100% with and it appears so is del and he is what i call certified.

This is why i got out years (15th Edition) ago due to people doing stuff like this, i still stand by my word in that if your not Qualified don't do it.

So if all i'm doing is pulling cable which any monkey can do and not actually terminating anything then fine.

 

I just want it done right and cable pulled via areas i know and it saves a whole load of time for the other sparc to do

which he likely will either get a junior to do anyways.

 

I fully understand where you are coming from and i personally wouldnt sign off anybodies else's work just on the bases

of they said there qualified.

 

Now I am a qualified network engineer and i will be pulling catv cables through various ducting so that is the main reason

for me going to do some of the work myself as theres nothing worse than one engineer snagging the work and causing damage

to network cables that have a more chance of being damaged.

 

This is why i got out years (15th Edition) ago due to people doing stuff like this, i still stand by my word in that if your not Qualified don't do it.