Originally Posted by
JonS
I cannot comment on the safe zone circuit protection issues etc that Gumby and Geps have been debating, but getting back to how to control mains sockets, my views are as discussed the safety/regs requirements for FCUs etc make for excessive wall sockets. What I did was (with advice from clued up sparky) have a ring main and then a few QRH controlled spurs from a sub-Consumer unit.
This is OK but as pointed out there are still a lot of spare sockets which only get used for Christmas lights!
The ideal for retrofit would be RF controlled devices that integrate with Idratek and I am sure they must be on the drawing board so wait / use X10 / Homeeasy etc
OR (and I've no idea if this is allowed in the regs)... use an outlet of the ample structured wiring you are probably installing and create a project-box with mains feed in from a socket on your ring main, Idranet in via your structured wiring and put the relays, fuses and outlets into a suitable enclosure. This won't be compact but in the long run will be better than the excess wall-sockets that have been discussed; you can move it about (structured wiring permitting) and when RF arrives you can remove it completely. Obviously in this case you would have to take care to label the cat5/6 sockets used for Idranet carefully else 12-15V might fry an ethernet device. You would feed Idranet into the structured wiring at the patch panel linking into a 6WA or similar module. I think this is also what SimBarr was suggesting.
2p