mylocalelectrician’s posterous

Today and tomorrow is the last two days of our second fix on the two bedroom flat. All is going well with all the electrical works but there is a slight spanner in the works with regards to the washing machine. It turns out that there is no room in the living / kitchen area for a washing machine so the builder decided he can make a space in the bathroom for a built in model. I just love builders!! Lol. Of course we had to put in a new supply for the washing machine and as I explained to the builder the socket that will supply the washing machine must have a fused spur isolator so if the washing machine needs to be pulled out for any reason the socket it is plugged into can be disconnected from its mains voltage supply. The electrics on our part was not too bad as I was able to extend the ring from a nearby socket in the bedroom next door to the bathroom and I have also labelled the spur “ washing machine isolator “ and have explained to the customer that there must be a label near or on the washing machine which indicates the location of the isolator as the customer was adamant that he did not what an un switched spur in the bathroom on his “ really expensive wall tiles “ !!

So basically the electrics are done. But take a look at the picture of the space for the washing machine and also take a look at how close the bath is to this space ( 400mm ).  I think things were not thought out fully on their part.

What a pain today was. Larry and I thought we would arrange to do this job today as this would enable us to take an early day so we could meet up with Adam Colthorpe, Our genius web designer and developer, To move our online business to the next stage.

This job should have taken about an hour. The job was to change all the plastic electrical points in a kitchen to a flat plate brushed chrome range. We rewired this kitchen about a month ago but because the kitchen had not arrived we fitted white plastic sockets, spurs etc.

When we turned up today with the new range of sockets etc I took off the first socket and saw what you see in the picture. To cut a long story short it took us the best part of three hours to cut away bits of the tiles that the tiler had “kindly” cut badly because our sockets did not fit flat on the tiles. We did our best and at the end or the job the sockets were flat against the wall. With the exception of a few small gaps between the tiles and the flat plate sockets as “quite a few” of the tiles on the walls were about 5 or 6mm difference in depth!!         

Today was one of them days where we were running about all over the place. We started off with a job just outside Maidstone to disconnect a P.I.R alarm sensor from a gardtec / risco group 500 series alarm because the customer has got the builders in and they are demolishing an old extension from her property and replacing it with a rather modest sized extension!

After this job we moved onto another job that we have on the go just to run in a couple of lighting circuits so the builders could get on with their job. We then went to our last job of the day.

We were hoping for an early day today but as we all know this seldom goes according to plan. The job was to repair an old domestic alarm system where the S.A.B Bell box was no longer sounding. As you can see by the picture I took of the alarm panel it is quite an old gardtec 300 series alarm. Luckily Larry had worked on this panel some years previous and had installed his engineer code into the panel so we were able to access the engineer mode. This enabled us to replace the S.A.B Bell box, after a few telephone calls later to the alarm manufactures to get the conversion terminology, And get the alarm system back to full working order.  

Everything is now second fixed for the exception of one circuit we have left disconnected in the consumer unit as I am not happy about installing the downlights. I have spoke to the builder and I have told him I am not happy about what he is saying so I have refused to fit them!

To cut a long story short, When I cut into the fire board ceiling to fit the fire rated downlights this is what I saw… Yes as you can tell above the fire boarding / Plaster boarding is celotex. I explained to the builder that of course how do I fit a six inch fire rated downlight into this ceiling with a gap of one inch between the plasterboard and the celotex ? He said to me to cut away as much celotex as I needed.

What do you think I should do ?

Last day of our second fix. We arrived at the job about 8am this morning, All was going great until about 10.30am. As I said yesterday we first fixed about two months ago, We had capped all the cables down to where the consumer unit will be situated and then explained to the customer that when the fire boarding is installed we needed our cables pulled through the board so we can then fit them into the consumer unit.

Well… Take a look at the picture I took today just after Larry had installed the new consumer unit. Spot the mistake ?

Incase the picture is not too clear there is no main earth nor bonding to the gas or water. Why ? Because after about an hours investigation it turned out that the guy who installed the boarding felt that the earth cables, Never got to the bottom of why just the earth cables, lol, were in his way and removed them and placed them under the floor just above the consumer unit. Luckily we were able to fish the cables back through.  

Today and tomorrow we are second fixing a two bedroom flat that we first fixed about two months ago! The customer is renovating this flat in stages as he gets some more money together, hence the length of time between the first fix and the second fix.

To be honest even thought the job is being done over a long period of time it is quite a nice job. The way the customer arranges it is, he gets in different trades at different times so it is really quite refreshing that there are no other trades on site while we are there! I presume the other trades would say the same as me.

The picture I took today is of a hole I cut in the ceiling for a 6" flush ceiling mounted extractor fan. Looking thorough the hole is the kitchen area. You can also see my pad saw as I could not find out 6" 150mm hole cutter.

Tomorrow Larry will be installing the 17^th edition dual rcd consumer unit and I will complete the rest of the second fix.

Hi, Just thought I would post a blog of a picture I took on last weeks rewire that I did not upload last week. This is another picture of a mixture of mice droppings and old type insulation that the mice put there I would guess for a bed or something.

Also in the picture at the far left and far right you can clearly see that someone had cut pieces out of the floor joists. This is where some of the old cables had been placed. Of course we would not do this now as there are regulations to state where and where not to run cables.  

We finished the rewire today. All went really well, and most importantly the customer was really happy with the job, He paid us up straight away. And the plus side was we finished at 2pm !!

Tomorrow will be the finishing day of our rewire. We were hoping we would get it finished today but the usual thing happened, The customer wanted some extras, No surprise there I guess lol ! After I explained that unfortunately it will at extra cost because not only the time the extras will take but of course the materials will cost, we marched on and got them done which took us most of the day, as well as pulling out as many of the old rubber cables in the property we feasibly could.

The picture I took earlier this week was a junction box and cables I removed. As you can see someone had at some time installed a new light ( This was for a porch light ) and used the old rubber cable lighting loop and connected their new pvc twin and earth cable to it.

Unfortunately the porch light had no earth as the old rubber cables had no earth / cpc  cable within them as earthing lighting circuits was not introduced until later on.

Something else we found after pulling out the cooker. As you can see the junction box is being feed by a 6.0mm twin and earth cable. The other 6.0mm cable is going off directly into the cooker. No cooker outlet plate to be found. The other most worrying thing is if you take a look at the picture I took there is also a 1.0mm twin and earth cable feeding a switched fused spur which goes on to feed the igniters for the gas hob.

It still amazes me that people do this type of work although us electricians come across this type of work a lot. A lot of non electricians would probably look at this and wonder why I am saying this and would say something like “ It is only feeding a spur and the spur is only feeding a gas hob. Well for anyone who does find them selves thinking something along those lines I will tell you why this is not good.