Electricity to a shed

I want to get electricity out to my shed, and I reckon the easiest way to do this is to use an armoured cable hooked up to an outside light on my house and feed a socket off that.

Is this feasible? What do I need to watch out for? How much of a load could I put on this socket? I want to run a tumble dryer off it, but there's also the possibility of a light and a lawn mower at sporadic times.

I know nothing about leccy (except how much it costs) and am a bit nervous about doing it myself, would a sparky be worth the money in just doing this one job?

I'm not an electrician but I know that you should not power appliances like tumble dryers from light points. A tumble dryer probably uses 1.8Kw or more when running at full load, add in a light or lawnmower and pretty soon your pushing the load up to over 2Kw. The maxium load a light point would normally carry would be no more than 200watts, so based on this you are overloading the cable. In any case if you are running power to a detached building this should be done from a separate dedicated circuit with its own MCB protection. Ignoring the basic wiring regulations here could potentially cause a fire or worse, sorry to be alarmist but you could be putting your home at risk and an insurance company would probably contest a claim if illegal wiring were at fault! I think you could probably run a light point to your shed without difficulty, but you should consult an electrician.

Agree 100% with Carpenter here. If you're even the least bit nervous about undertaking anything to do with electricity, dont do it! You can cut down on the cost by having the trench dug for the cable (min 18 inches I believe), and the route from the consumer unit to the shed planned and pre-drilled/ chased etc.


They've recently changed the law in the UK to prohibit DIY'ers from doing all but the most basic wiring work to reduce the number of fires/accidents. They may follow suit here.
Leo