mylocalelectrician’s posterous

This is a picture I took yesterday from one of the houses that one of our regular customers rent out. He asked us to come to take a look at the kitchen sockets as they were not working. This was a really easy one as it turned out that a kitchen appliance was faulty and was tripping the RCD. Problem solved!

I really felt I had to show you all this picture as it did make me laugh. I found these cables going around the ceiling joist in the cellar when I went down there to check the consumer unit. I have of course pointed this out to our customer!

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Just thought I would upload the picture to show you all yet another electrical hazard we found at last weeks job in the kitchen. Like I said in my previous blog post, I am so glad we sorted the problems out.

These cables were live! And the cable hanging down directly in the middle of the picture had been cut off at some point and left hanging there live with no connector block or junction box to terminate the live ends.

As you can clearly see it is a blessing that nobody was electrocuted, especially as you can see this is where the customers children play and hang their paintings and drawings, Also before we got there the property had an old fuse wire fuse box and obviously no RCD.

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Today we finished this weeks job and all went really well. We even got an early day! I just wanted to show you some cables I found under the floor in the extension of the property. The new cable is one I have installed a one of the new legs of the downstairs ring main, the other two are existing.

The old black and red and grey outer cable is the other end of the downstairs ring main. The white pvc cable was a radial going off to one socket. The other end of the old downstairs ring main is now connected to the new cable going back to the consumer unit, this making the new kitchen ring.

I don’t know if you can see clearly enough but the white cable is a 1.5mm! this was connected to the other two old cables by connector blocks! And the earths were just twisted together. I think if I knew who had done this I would poke them in the eye!

There is a family with small children living in this house, I am so glad that we were there to put things right.

And yes, I also rewired the socket that was being feed by the 1.5mm  

Take a look at what I found when I took away some boxing in around some pipe work today! I found a junction box under the floor upstairs in the job we are doing this week and found that someone had cut into the ring main with a junction box and took a spur from that. I then traced the cable to a point where it disappeared downstairs.

I went downstairs to where I worked it out roughly to be and found that it was in the corner of the kitchen behind some boxing in. I removed the boxing in to find that the other end of this ' Live cable ' was just wrapped around a copper pipe! If you look closely you can even see that the phase (live) conductor is even exposed. I am so glad that we are here sorting out the electrical problems in this property as we can all quite clearly see that this can't possibly be left in this state. This is just another reason why I am so happy that it is now illegal ( building regulation Part P ) for non competent persons to install or move electrical circuits without building control consent or a competent ( registered ) electrician to do the work. I have seen a quite a few electrical horrors over the years but this one must be one of the most dangerous I have seen in a long time. Specially as the electrical installation, before we change the consumer unit, Had an old fuse box and not even the water supply was bonded!     

This week we are on a job until Friday. The customers have their builder coming in next week to fit a new kitchen and redecorate the downstairs. The customer booked us in for this week to sort out the electrics in the property. We found that there is only one ring main on the ground floor of the house and explained that if they are having a new kitchen fitted then it would be advisable to have the kitchen wired on its own ring main. So to help the customer out with regards the price we said that instead of a complete rewire of the downstairs ring and kitchen we would try to find the ends of the ring that feed the kitchen and replace the two ends and take them back to the consumer unit , that we are also fitting, to create a new kitchen ring. We can then take the other ends of the downstairs ring and replace them and take them back to the new consumer unit. This way it will not be a complete rewire but it will save them money and help with the loading on the existing downstairs ring main, As kitchens do have the biggest load in a property, i.e. washing machines, kettles etc.

There are quite a few other jobs required in the property to sort out so that when we fit the new consumer unit we do not have any nuisance tripping. I.e. earth sleeveing etc.

The other job is to rewire the garage on the side of the property and run in a new 16mm T&E cable to feed a secondary consumer unit. The garage had been wired with a 2.5mm twin and earth feeding an old metal fuse box from a socket in the kitchen. The picture I took today I felt I had to show you all. This is part of the existing wiring in the garage. Was this really an electrician who done this ?

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I came across this junction box under a bedroom floor. Even me as an electrician found it difficult to find this junction box let alone get access to it!

This junction box is the main junction box for the downstairs lighting. This is classed as ‘the junction box method ‘. The junction box method is the old way of wiring lighting. Basically you take a lighting cable from the fuse box / consumer unit and take it to the junction box then you take one cable from the junction box to each light on that floor level. The new, and I think the best way of wiring lighting in a property is three plating ‘The three plate method ‘. This means basically you take a cable from the fuse box / consumer unit to the first light on that floor level and then link that to the next light and so on.

So, the moral of this blog is that if you wire lighting in the new three plate method then access to every cable connection is easily accessible. For not only if any fault occurs,  but for inspection and testing of the lighting circuit.     

Today we had a job to install two mains and battery operated smoke alarms and one heat alarm in a flat that is being renovated to be let out. The job in the whole was easy enough. A 1mm cable from the newly installed consumer unit to the first smoke alarm and then a 3 core linking them all together, A straight forward job and not anything interesting to talk about with our installation and commissioning of the detectors.

But for what every reason the customer had already had the flat rewired by his own electrician and said that his electrician does not install smoke detectors, Hence we got the job. As another electrician had done the rewire I did not feel it was right for me to get involved in what I saw in the consumer unit, All I did was inform the customer that the other electrician should return to tidy up the consumer unit. I don’t know if you can see clearly in the picture I took? But not only was the installation of the consumer unit messy internally as well as externally, But he also had a 32amp mcb on a radial circuit and what seemed another radial circuit i.e. a 2.5mm twin and earth in with a 1.5mm cable in a 6amp mcb! I really thought by now that these types of mistakes were for amateurs NOT competent persons! Another thing that really does annoy me is that this is a brand new install and new consumer unit and the electrician had used another brand of mcb.