Moving and splitting a fuse board

lougre

We are going to convert the front part of our house into a separate studio apartment. At some stage over the next few years we may go abroad for a year or two so both units would be rented separately. The existing utility room will become part of the studio however that's where the fuse board is.

Our initial plans were to have the Fuse board spilt and moved. Ie the 3 rooms that will be the studio split apart from main board but that board stay in it's current position and the rest of the board moved into the main houses kitchen; approx 1.5-2 meters away.
Our reasons:
A: In case access is required to the fuse board for anything in the main house
B: in the hope of using an electricity monitor on the studio switch board to calculate electricity usage.

Speaking to an electrician friend he's advising that this is now a huge job due to new ESB regulations and that he wouldn't do it if he was us due to cost/hassle.

Any thoughts/experience regarding this.

And if we don't spilt and move the fuse board how would the electricity usage for 3 rooms be monitored separately?

Thanks a mil

2011

Option A: Get the ESB involved. This will mean 2 separate ESB meters feeding two separate distribution boards. Each installation is completely standalone. As far as I know planning permission would be required for this option. Also there is a standing charge for each meter which would have to be paid even when the premises is empty.

Option B: Wire a smaller sub distribution board off the existing distribution board for the studio flat. Buy a small kWh meter and install it for this board. Charge the tenant accordingly. The disadvantage of this is that if the supply for this board tripped at the main board or was turned off there access to the main board would be required. Does this justify a 2nd ESB meter? In my opinion, no.

Option C: Install a main distribution meter in a "landlords" area that tenants from both the main house and the studio apartment have access to. This would be fed directly from the ESB meter. This would feed 2 sub distribution boards, one for the main house and one for the studio apartment. Meter each sub board separately here. This ticks all of the boxes, if you have a suitable area.

Obviously there are other options and variations of the above.

Remember to seek advice if supply two separate premises from one ESB meter so as to avoid overloading. This is not difficult to achieve if you take a few simple precautions.

thecribber

lougre wrote: »

Speaking to an electrician friend he's advising that this is now a huge job due to new ESB regulations and that he wouldn't do it if he was us due to cost/hassle

Ask your electrician friend what "new ESB regulations" he is talking about. I can assure you that ESB requirements have changed little if at all in the last 20 years. Maybe he means the ETCI regulations which are the wiring rules all electricians must comply with. The current 4th edition of these rules was issued in 2008, ten years ago. They have changed twice in those 10 years once in 2011 and once in 2016. There have been no recent changes which would make the installation you require more difficult than it would normally be.
My advise would be to speak to other electricians and get 3 of 4 quotes for the work you require.

lougre

Thanks for your replies.

Option A isn't viable as we don't want to go down the route of planning permission.
Option C we don't have a common area. The fuse board now is in our utility room beside the kitchen. The utility room will be part of the studio post conversion.
Leaves option B. If the fuse board was split and we bought a small meter as suggested to monitor usage. Define meter. Do you mean actual esb meter or I've read there are home hub power monitors you link to the fuse board- is this what you mean. Basically if we can determine the output of either the studio or the main house we can deduct from overall usage to ascertain each dwellings usage.

To move the main part of the board into the kitchen which is 1.5-2 meters away, is that cumbersome/expensive?

Maybe I'm making it too complicated, add 25% of our current electricity bill to the studios rent assuming that will cover it.
And hope nothing trips in either apartment if so make sure both agree beforehand to allow access to their board if needs be. That could be complicated too, though may never happen.

The entire conversion is fairly simple except for this fuseboard issue.
Was aiming for around €1k and 1 or 2 days work... Thecribbler, think we'll get more quotes and see if any come close budget wise or have good ideas

2011

lougre wrote: »

Define meter. Do you mean actual esb meter or I've read there are home hub power monitors you link to the fuse board- is this what you mean.

You can actually buy reconditioned ESB meters for small money. I bought them in the past from Eurosales.

Basically if we can determine the output of either the studio or the main house we can deduct from overall usage to ascertain each dwellings usage.

Exactly.

To move the main part of the board into the kitchen which is 1.5-2 meters away, is that cumbersome/expensive?

It could be, depends on lots of things. Why would you want to do this?

And hope nothing trips in either apartment if so make sure both agree beforehand to allow access to their board if needs be.

Perhaps I did not explain option B clearly enough. The smaller sub-distribution board for the studio apartment should be located in the studio apartment. That way if anything trips it can be rest from within the studio apartment itself. The only exception would be one MCB or fuse (rated at about 40A) that supplies this sub-distribution board, this would be installed in the main distribution board (currently in your utility room).

The entire conversion is fairly simple except for this fuseboard issue.

As I am sure you know there is a serious accommodation shortage in this country. If I were in your shoes I would pay the money and get it done properly. It could be a gold mine.

Was aiming for around €1k and 1 or 2 days work...

Prices are mainly based on time and materials. When it comes to quality electrical work neither are cheap

Dardania

2011's advice is (as usual) spot on, but just to chime in one thing on top: as far as I recall, you must be an authorised electricity supplier to charge anyone for electricity. So I don't think you can just charge people per kWh consumed, as you're not registered, and could be adding margin etc. on top.

What you could do, and when you consider everything else, is charge a utility services fee to each tenant, to reflect their combined electricity and heat consumption (and possibly water in future - if there are many people living in the house, you may be pushed into the cohort who actually pay).

Another thing to consider is how will these meters be read, and who will send the bills to everyone? That may prove an administrative burden, trying to deal with abroad...

2011

Dardania wrote: »

as far as I recall, you must be an authorised electricity supplier to charge anyone for electricity.

You are 100% correct, we came across this recently at work. I think that the way around this is to put the ESB bill for the main house in the name of the tenant. Then you could suggest that this tenant splits the electricity bill in a fair manner with the studio apartment tenant and point out that there is a meter in place.

What you could do, and when you consider everything else, is charge a utility services fee to each tenant, to reflect their combined electricity and heat consumption (and possibly water in future - if there are many people living in the house, you may be pushed into the cohort who actually pay).

Makes sense.

Another thing to consider is how will these meters be read, and who will send the bills to everyone? That may prove an administrative burden, trying to deal with abroad...

There will only be one additional meter. Once an average is established reading it once a year is enough or each time there is a new tenant, whichever is less.

I think that the most important task for any landlord is to find a good tenant and when they get them to treat the fairly. Once tenants feel that a landlord is being reasonable there generally isn’t a problem.

lougre

Thanks for the replies. Good to know re charging electricity that it's not something we can do. We definitely want to do all this properly and fairly.

Our thoughts were initially add a utility style amount to studios rent to cover electricity, bins etc. review the amount based on average increase to our bills when we leave.

Then when we go abroad add the costs of our monthly utilities to main houses rent based on our average costs up to a certain usage amount. Ie if the bills skyrocket then ascertain using the meter/monitor how much each tenant used over the average then charge accordingly. It's what happens with a property we have in Australia wrt water usage.

2011 couldn't find a meter on the link but think you mean attaching a reconditioned meter to studio board (looks like there are coin based options too?)
The reason we'd move the main board into the kitchen is because atm the main board is in the utility room which will become the studios kitchenette. Ie moving the main part will give us access to the board in the main house.

2011

lougre wrote: »

2011 couldn't find a meter on the link but think you mean attaching a reconditioned meter to studio board (looks like there are coin based options too?)

I only posted the link so that you could contact Eurosales. It was a long time ago, but now that you say it I think I purchased coin based meters. There are other options that they can supply you with.

The reason we'd move the main board into the kitchen is because atm the main board is in the utility room which will become the studios kitchenette. Ie moving the main part will give us access to the board in the main house.

I see.
The price will depend on the complexity and part of that will be whether cables need to be extended or not. Extending the mains cable (for example) would not be an option and replacing it is likely to be quite expensive.

lougre

Thanks to all. We've some people coming out to look and price using some of the ideas here

2011

lougre wrote: »

Thanks to all. We've some people coming out to look and price using some of the ideas here

Great, please let us know how you get on and what you decide.
Best of luck with it.