Daisy-chaining plug extensions

[lphaup]

At work i have been assigned the task of coming up with an alternative of daisy-chaining extensions together underneath the office desks. There are up to 6 chained together and was wondering if anyone had any ideas regarding a solution?

 

Thanks,

Lewis

[fairm010]

We have this situation here. We are putting the desks where it suits best and have electricians in installing as many sockets as needed on the wall behind the desks.

[Nibiru]

At work i have been assigned the task of coming up with an alternative of daisy-chaining extensions together underneath the office desks. There are up to 6 chained together and was wondering if anyone had any ideas regarding a solution?

 

Thanks,

Lewis

 

You have quite a fire risk there! Get the sparkies in and get it wired up properly....

[lphaup]

Unfortunately this is a big, open office with long lines of desks going into the centre of the room, so wall mounted sockets wouldnt work, any other suggestions would be very welcome as i am struggling to think of anything,

 

Many thanks,

Lewis

[Andrew_C]

As above. You should have sufficient installed outlets.

 

That said, it is impractical in many situations to run all the cables back from a workstation to the wall. I'd advocate 4/6 ways with sufficient cable to get back to the wall, but not daisy chained. They should be wired with suitably sized cable to keep the earth loop impedance low.

 

The HSE (I think) published something a while back deprecating the indiscriminate use of extensions. They are fine if not heavily loaded and their use is planned.

[Chris_]

If the desks are permanently in that position you could get sockets run along the floor/under the desks to the required locations. You could also look at getting some floor-ceiling power poles installed.

[johnat1121]

We use Dado trunking attached to the back of the desks, at a ratio of a double socket to every network port it works pretty well and is easy to add to later the look a bit like this but has commando plugs on the end. Rcd protected trunking assembly | eBay

[hardtailstar]

We have trunking on desks with power outlets and network ports

[Oaktech]

We used to have a load of power strips that were 6 outlet each and could be daisy chained up to 5 times and had a 16a cform on the end...you had to have the sparkies in to stick a couple of 16a connectors on the wall instead of 13, but that usually isn't expensive. When I find them I'll post what they are.

[Chris_]

Or you could get a couple of 32a sockets installed on the wall and then a few big PDUs like these.. Y120400?gclid=CIf16Lvn074CFSb4wgods3wA6g :: Data Comms Direct Ltd - First in Network Infrastructure

[lphaup]

Thanks, that would be much appreciated!

[unixman_again]

Get the electricians in to provide enough sockets. Remove the extensions and get SMT/SLT to enforce work safety.

The fire brigade will be happy to come in and provide lots of help if required.

Hopefully you CAN get the electricians to provide enough sockets. When the IT office was being rebuilt at my first school, the architect came in and said there would be 10 sockets in our room, that's two each for the techies, one for the printer and one spare. He was horrified when I said we needed 6 each, and that I wanted 4 double spares scattered around the office, so 28 sockets in all. "Let's make it an even 30", I said. I was determined to get rid of the four way extensions on everyone's bench. I don't know if it happened as I left before it was done. There was some muttering about there not being enough capacity in the box where the fuses lived.

 

Where I work now, we do have enough sockets in theory, but they are all badly placed. For instance mine are behind my chair and I can't turn the desk around to face the sockets, so I have a long 4 way to power my PC and screens coming off one socket. So get enough sockets and have them in sensible places.

Edited May 30, 2014 by unixman_again

[MatthewL]

I've seen similar things to these mounted to desks with a power feed going back to a fuse spur on the wall all wired in tidily and cable in a basket.

 

Desk Power & Floor Sockets

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Also I've had 10 double sockets installed in my home office (dado trunking) just behind the desk, plus 4 other doubles for other things, I wanted to get rid of extension leads when I moved in.

[tumbleweed]

'Y' kettle leads can be useful - power two devices off one socket.

[visioN]

Make your own extension leads?

Or get a sparky to make you some to specified lengths if putting in proper points isn't an option

[Domino]

Do you have a suspended ceiling?

 

Our Riga office had the same issue..We run ceiling mounted power cables down spirals to desk mounted distribution sockets...looks odd at first but is workable and very flexible