mylocalelectrician’s posterous

I was in the wholesalers today and while I was waiting for the guy behind the counter to serve me, there was a conversation going on with another electrician and another member of staff. I overheard the conversation that the electrician had fitted 31 emergency light fittings and after four weeks they started to break down one at a time. Me being me! I got involved in the conversation with the electrician and it turns out that the emergency lights were overheating and also distorting the gear trays inside the fittings.

I took a picture of one of the emergency lights and as you can clearly see the lamp was either getting too hot or the PCB was overheating. Clearly whatever was the cause this was not good!

The other electrician said he will give me a call when the wholesaler gets some feedback from the manufacturer and hopefully some compensation. As for the electrician, who now has to go back and refit all 31 emergency lights. If I were that electrician I would certainly not be happy and personally would want the manufacturer to refit them.

Also I would not buy anything from this manufacturer. To be honest I would love to put on here the manufacturers name but out of professionalism I will omit this.      

I have just found another picture on my phone of the intruder alarm system that we had to replace last week. I just wanted you all to see this is a picture of the internal wiring of the main box of the intruder alarm system. The green and yellow pvc electrical tape you see in the picture has been used to tape up the tamper circuits in the daisy chain method. Most alarms that I come across are wired in the fashion. Personally I use a silicon based connector that BT engineers use as I find them not only a more successful connection but are far more tidier than what you see here.

Today I had planned out as a day off the tools to work on my website www.mylocalelectrician.co.uk. This was not to be! Well not the morning anyway. I was called this morning by a man who had another electrician in to upgrade his consumer unit two weeks ago. The customer had got his certificate for the work and to be honest the work was ok. The guy was complaining that the right hand RCD kept tripping every time he plugged something into a socket. Apparently the electrician who done the job has gone on holiday for two weeks so this is why he called me in. I had a quick try myself with a table lamp and sure enough the RCD tripped as soon as I tried to turn on the light.

I also had a look inside the consumer unit and to be honest I could not work it out straight away as new RCD’s are very rarely faulty. I carried on looking at the consumer unit a then I saw it! The RCD feeding the right hand circuits was not only being feed from the top by an internal cable from the bottom of the main switch but it was also being feed from the bottom by the buss bar that had not been cut off which also was also connected to the main switch. Problem solved! Only thing I can’t work out was how the other electrician managed to get his readings.      

Today we had this job booked in from around two weeks ago. We went to the job two weeks ago to try to sort out a problem with the customers alarm. We spent an hour or so their but unfortunately the panel could not be repaired so it needed replacing. The bell box also needed replacing as it was an old bells only box and adding to the problems the cable from the panel to the bell box was only a four core and most new bell boxes need at least five cores, Or at least the ones we fit do.

The job was a really nice job today, probably one of the best I have had. The lady was really polite and brought us out tea and biscuits about every hour. It felt slightly strange to me as I am used to tea in a mug and the lady brought it all out on a really posh silver tray and to be honest I can’t remember the last time I used a cup and saucer! The other thing that made me slightly nervous was her pristine cream carpet when I was spooning the sugar into my cup!

Anyway, back to the job in hand. Replacing the four core alarm cable with an eight core, we always use an eight core in case of any unforeseen problems, went well and the fitting of the new panel and bell box also went well. The lady was so pleased when we had finished she even gave us a tip!       

Today we decided we will completely finish the Kitchen job. That meant an easy day putting the door furniture on and a good clean up of the kitchen and an early day! This was not to be, but I guess I should have known better than thinking I would get an easy early day lol!

Last night Larry received a call from a gentleman that required a Periodic Inspection Report Certificate for his mortgage company as he wanted to release some equity in his property. He was told by the mortgage company that for them to release any money they would require a periodic inspection report Certificate on the property. To be honest I have not heard of this before but I guess this is because of the recession perhaps? Unfortunately we were not able to issue a periodic inspection report Certificate as the moment we opened the old type mem fuse box we found rubber cables feeding the ring mains and they were crumbling away without even touching them. We explained to the guy that unfortunately we would not be able to issue a periodic inspection report certificate and explained what the property required rather urgently. We then headed back to the kitchen job to finish off. We will be back at the kitchen job on Thursday to install a couple of ceiling fans in the customers bedrooms as an extra.

We have nearly finished the kitchen install and we should finish on Monday, Just the plinths, pelmets and doors to go on. It has taken longer than we thought because of mainly the electrical problems we had to sort out. The picture above is of yet another connector block in the wall taped up the PVC insulation tape. We will also be issuing an installation certificate for the new kitchen ring we had to install.

This coming week we are really busy as we have been on this job for just over a week so we have got a build up of loads of smaller jobs to sort out. They are a mixture of small electrical works and a couple of burglar alarm services and installs. We also hope to take a long weekend off, Friday to Monday, so I can spend some more time on promoting our website www.mylocalelectrician.co.uk.

All the kitchen units are in and we also fitted the sink and electric hob today along with all the work tops. Before we fitted the kitchen wall units we filled all the holes in the walls. One of the walls had been over boarded with plaster board at some point. This is what I found tucked in behind the plasterboard. This piece of 1.00mm 3 core flex was connected to a socket on the other side of the wall and was used for the old under cupboard lighting that we took out thankfully.

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How NOT to install an extra socket. This is a picture I took as I pulled out a 1000mm base unit from the kitchen. As you can see someone at some point had taken a spur from the ring main in the kitchen to add an extra socket. This of course is not uncommon at all but if you look closely you will see that the extra socket is mounted on a flush / in the wall box, but has been mounted surface. I really can not think of anything more lazy! Oh, Other than not doing the job at all I suppose.

I don’t know if any of you electricians get involved in other types of work but this week is a little different for us. We part rewired a property well over two years ago for a lady and I remember at the time she was really happy with our work and also us as people and said she would recommend us to anyone. Well she contacted us last week and asked if we could come and look at her kitchen and give her a price for rewiring it. We did, and to cut a long story short, the lady asked us to rewire the kitchen and fit a new kitchen for her.

Larry and I discussed this and decided that we would do this for her as she said she did not feel happy about getting in other trades she did not know nor trust.

The job is not very nice as the kitchen is a complete nightmare. It is dirty and cluttered. One of the pictures I took today I really had to show you all. The picture is of the back of the worktop as I took away the microwave. I am sure you can see the mouse droppings and the state the worktop is in. Luckily Larry and I keep gloves in the van!

The job will take us at least all of this week so I will let you know and take pictures of what we find as the job progresses.

Today we had a job in London. Quite a straight forward job where the customer wanted us to move a couple of sockets, a spur, and underfloor heating system thermostat and a two 2 gang switch. The whole job we did without any problems what so ever. The only thing that I felt I had to take a picture of to share with you all was of this two gang switch as it was wired when I unscrewed it from the back box.

Can anyone else explain why a two gang switch was put here ? Or maybe should it have been a one gang two way switch that someone got confused with ?