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fitting a patress |
Before working on any electrical circuit isolate the supply by switching off the main switch and remove the fuse to the circuit that you are working on, If it is a circuit breaker switch off the main fuse and circuit breaker and remove the wires from the top of the circuit breaker. Place a sign saying that you are working on the circuits on the consumer unit, then nobody will restore the power whilst you are working on it.
If you are not 100% certain what you are doing call a qualified electrician. Building regulations are changing all the time and modifying your home electrics could be against new rules and could invalidate your home insurance, if in doubt check first!
Sometimes it is not practical to fit a metal accessory backbox and so it is often much easier to fit a patress, often called a surface mounted back box. These are available in PVC and Plastic. The Plastic ones can be difficult to work with and often it requires practice if the patress needs cutting to be able to feed the cable into the box from the top or bottom.
If the wire is being fed from behind then you can simply tap out the specially weakened bits called knock outs with a screwdriver.
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One of the disadvantages of using a patress is that it makes the accessory prone to knocking and impact damage as they stick out considerably. |
These are the easiest of all back boxes to fit and it is simply a matter of screwing the patress to the wall using some suitable screws and fixings.
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Here you can see that this patress is simply screwed to the wall and the wire is fed into the patress from behind. |
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