Safe zones for electric cables
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.
Electric cables are usually run in one of a number of prescribed safe zones. Knowing where these zones are allows you to correctly install cables and help eliminated damage to them when drilling walls at a later date
The safe zones for cables concealed in walls are
- a horizontal zone within 150mm of the top of a wall
- a vertical zone within 150mm of the angle formed by two walls - e.g. internal and external corners.
- the horizontal and vertical zone adjacent to an electrical accessory (switch, socket, cable outlet etc)
- where an accessory on the reverse side of the wall can be easily determined, e.g. through a door or archway, and the wall or partition depth is 100mm or less, then the horizontal and vertical zones to that accessory apply to both rooms:
Where cables are not in installed in a safe zone then they need to be installed according to the rules explained here.