Dodgy trade pictures for your amusement! - 1 Million Views!

[Dave OCD]

Black as the N and Earth as a Phase, Nice work there Mr Plumber and you wonder why you should be banned from touching anything with Wires

He may have used the grey and green/yellow as a 'volt free' switching pair from the relevant boiler terminals - still not right though.

 

[pc1966]

At a friend's party last night, but seeing an extension lead plugged in to an extension lead, plugged in to a multi-way adaptor in the hall for the garden use and not and RCD in sight made me wince. Had a quick look as she was telling me of other electrical woes and its not pretty, though far from the worst to appear here. Sadly whoever did the last wiring could not be bothered to remove the old heating fuse box, not event to remove or cut the tails off!



The top butchers of the box is impressive, more care and effort than a hammer hole, but still such a mess. Of course why put in a blank when there is a live busbar within finger reach?



The supply is in pyro and I hope the red sleeve is just for identification as it looks af if the copper is exposed off the pot, but maybe there is black sleeving below? I decided not to poke it just to find out.



Its not a great installation and at some point I should try and help out. Blanking the spare and maybe RCBOs replacing the Proteus MCBs is an option to avoid the hassle of trying to redo the tails the correct (non seal faerie way) but I don't know if current Proteus RCBOs are compatible, and for all the cost a new metal CU of a brand I prefer might be less trouble in the long run.

 

[Dustydazzler]

Price to Rip that entire monstrosity out and start from scratch all new , or don't touch it at all

 

[pc1966]

Price to Rip that entire monstrosity out and start from scratch all new , or don't touch it at all

If this was commercial then 100% what you say.

As a friend I would be happy to donate my support but it probably comes to the same thing - the cost of a new CU is less than the time wasted trying to make something less crap out of what is there. The other thing slightly troubling me is this is a 40-60s build I guess, and it has asbestos panels in places, so I am not going to make changes that mean new holes being drilled. Thankfully there is plenty of 19mm (I think) plywood there to fix stuff to.

I also dread to think what else will need attended to. There is an unmarked 16A MCB which needs to be identified, also there appears to be two RFC for a two bedroom flat, so possibly one is for the kitchen. But it has damn-all sockets and so she has an extension lead to plug in dishwasher and washing machine in to a single socket under the sink. Yes, more WFT? and another burned out aspect to properly fix.

The other oddity is two 16A socket circuits for the attic conversion. It is a single big room with only around 6 sets of sockets! Wonder if it was done by EU folks?

Single light circuit is another thing, though I would not be too surprised if that unmarked 16A turned out to be attic lights. And there is an outside PIR flood-lamp that is playing up and she is unaware of any means to switch it off, or indeed what circuit it was taken off.

 

[mainline]

The man from next door helped this recent widow out by doing a little electrical work.

 

[nicebutdim]

Everybody needs good neighbours.

 

[mainline]

Everybody needs good neighbours.

He probably charged her travel time as well.

 

[timhoward]

While trying to find out why a bathroom light doesn't work (for 3 months and multiple people have looked at it and ran away), it was obvious there was no power to switch...and the cable toner/tracer led me to this point as where it left the room. There was a suspicious severed cable the other side of the wall so I thought I'd have a look.

I decided to make the old feed safe and run a new one in the end. As there was no loft at all in this house it was time to break out the super-rods and today was my lucky day:.

And then some D-Line, sticks like, and filler (and some future sanding and painting....)

The exciting candlelit bathroom visits are no more.

 

[Julie.]

Eeek

 

[Raptor0014]

Eeek

View attachment 108464

Nicely done! I particularly like how they have left some of the bedding material on the conductors to give that little bit of extra protection. It’s little touches like that which sets them apart from other installers…

 

[mainline]

Nicely done! I particularly like how they have left some of the bedding material on the conductors to give that little bit of extra protection. It’s little touches like that which sets them apart from other installers…

I agree it’s probably one of the best worse.
It looks like they couldn’t be bothered with the cabinet door either.

 

[happysteve]

Looks like phase sequence is out, too

 

[mainline]

The man from next door helped this recent widow out by doing a little electrical work.


View attachment 108392

Went there yesterday to disconnect and this pic almost made me knock his door to tell him he shouldn’t be messing with electrics.

 

[Dustydazzler]

Don't really see any issue

It worked didn't it ?

 

[littlespark]

Its an air gap.... perfectly suitable form of insulation

is that 1 out of 7 cores on the line being used?

 

[mainline]

Don't really see any issue

It worked didn't it ?

Yes your right

Grenfell towers worked fine for many years as well.

 

[mainline]

Its an air gap.... perfectly suitable form of insulation

is that 1 out of 7 cores on the line being used?

Yeah I think he did some adiabatic calcs and decided he only needed 1 core

 

[Dustydazzler]

Yeah I think he did some adiabatic calcs and decided he only needed 1 core

the others are future upgrade cores

 

[Raptor0014]

No idea how this hasn’t ever tripped. Found it purely due to IR test and luckily it was in the bathroom at the end of the circuit. RCD protected and supplying a working fan.

Couple of others I found.

Lives in chocbloc and shoved in ceiling. Completely ignored the loop terminal on the rose.

Making sure the CPC is fully sleeved….

 

[littlespark]

This is at the funeral directors I’m at today.
Behind a locked door, so no immediate danger, but I’ve told them to talk to DNO.

3ph cut out. L1 unused, L2 does the funeral parlour and L3 (which I suspect is a link) runs upstairs to another fuse for a flat.

Should have been noticed when the meter was changed last September.

L1 has two exposed terminals, L2 has its spare terminal capped off with a plastic pin and L3 has 1 exposed terminal.