We have a redundant wall outlet that used to supply an electric wall heater (electrically heated house with a separate circuit on the consumer unit) – is it OK to turn this into a simple socket that I can plug a TV into?

It’s probably an Economy 7 circuit which means its on a different tariff – it will work but might cause an issue with the meter circuitry

Have you checked if it has a 24hour supply? the ones where I am only come live during economy 7 hours.

No economy 7 in the house – standard supply. It’s a holiday house with 95% summer usage so the heating isn’t used ‘that much’.

I once wired someone’s burglar alarm up to the economy seven by mistake. It was fine as long as they didn’t go out during the day!

It should be ok. Check the size of the fuse/MCB – if this mcb supplies just that outlet it should be either a 16 or 20amp mcb or a 15amp rewireable fuse. Check inside the outlet. It should be a minimum of 2.5mm cable. You should see only one cable in there. If there is two, then it feeds another outlet and I’d reconsider until you’ve got on-site expert advice.
It should be 30mA RCD protected to comply with the wiring regs.
If this checks out ok then a 13amp outlet will be ok. If no rcd present you can get a 13amp RCD protected socket.
Normal disclaimers as I’m not on site to check for you.

Happy new year!

Rich.

I once had the cover off an old Storage Heater, to try & trace a fault.
Unfortunately this was around 11pm.

I can confirm that 240v was reaching the input switch.

Thanks Rich. I’ll check behind the plate to see how many wires there are – there are 4 heaters on this floor and 5 on the ground floor. It looks like there’s a heater circuit for downstairs and a separate one for upstairs with a 16 amp mcb on each.

The key thing is that the cable is protected. A 16a mcb protects a 2.5mm cable ok (generally) so if it does loop on it’s not really an issue. The RCD should really be present too.
There is an arguement that the work is part P notifiable but I’ll leave that for you to decide!
Any questions, I’m around.
Rich.

This is what we did. Had an electrician in to fit a new CU and connect up all the new wiring and check it so just got it all ready after ripping out the hot water tank and he connected it all up amongst doing other notifiable stuff (bathroom towel rail etc).

Being a single 2.5mm it had a 16A breaker so we just made sure the new CU had a 16A breaker supplying it.

Handy place to charge drills, torches etc as the tank was removed and shelves fitted for storage.

It would be ok as its connected to the Rcd at the box , an if it was on 7 hr supply ring up you energy company an ask for a 4 terminal meter 1 rate or 2 then get engineer to put 5th terminal in a block on a perm live.