We have just wired a show room for a well know white goods supplier. Usually when we do these jobs they have there appliance on demo mode (e.g. the oven lights and the display comes on with element disconnected). This time its fully active cooking area with numerous active appliance. Now what has happened in the past is that when they have had active ovens and hobs connected (for the purpose of training and demos for the public) members of the public would come in and fiddle with the ovens and there were a few incidents of the ovens being left on and even setting light to the papers/polystyrene etc inside.

This is obviously not a good situation.

To overcome this we supplied all the sockets and isolators for the active cooking appliance (all behind the ovens, just there for purpose of connection - not accessible) via a contactor. This contactor basically energises a wall of ovens or disconnects them. The switch to operate the contactor is, in some cases, a little further than 3 meters from the appliance.

My point is, I understand an active cooking appliance needs a method of being isolated and it should be with in 1.5 meters and not more than 3 meters and must be in the same room but we also don't want members of the public to switch switch active appliance on, possibly leaving the oven on when the shop is unattended (members of the public do fiddle a lot).

These ovens are only supposed to be operated by trained members of staff only who know where the switch which operates the contactor is, giving them control of bank of ovens. The switch is easily accessible but on the end of the display stand out of sight.

Seeing as the cooking appliance are to be operated only by trained staff only would you consider it acceptable to not have a directly accessible isolator for the cooking appliance as the risk of a dangerous situation caused by a member of the public fiddling outweighs the risk of something going wrong when the appliance are operated by a trained person who knows about the contactor switch.


Go.