I was asked the other day to go with my builder mate to look at an installation at a house he's been asked to work on & offer my advice.
The house was an unoccupied 2 bed terrace with the leccy supply via a pole in the street, and it's a TT. Inside the house high up on the wall in the hallway we have the cutout & supplier's fuse, 16mm tails from that to the meter & again from meter to a stand-alone 60A 30mA RCD, then 16mm tails from there to a Wylex board fitted with those plug-in MCBs.
The first thing I noticed was all the CPCs connected to the Earth Bar in the CU, but no Green/Yellow cable coming from it to an Earth Stake, Gas Meter or Water Stop Cock. No signs anywhere of a MET either, so there is no "proper" means of earthing or bonding anywhere on this installation.
We wandered into the kitchen & the first thing we saw was a relatively new Baxi Combi boiler and I am forced to conclude that the tap rail of this boiler must be the only means of bonding the gas to the water, and offering a bit of an earth through the water & gas pipes.
Next, we looked at the built-under electric oven which was connected via plug top to a socket in an adjacent cupboard, and then we looked at the electric hob - 8.4kW hard wired all the way back to the CU by means of a length of 2.5 T&E which was draped down the back of the oven, then laid on top of the central heating pipes along the skirting, then up through the ceiling along with the central heating pipes & boxed in with them. It then somehow ran under the floor of the bedrooms until it emerged from the ceiling in the hall & entered the CU where it was "protected" by a 32A plug-in MCB.
While investigating in the kitchen, I came across a bit of paper bearing the British Gas logo / letterhead etc. in a drawer next to the cooker, & on reading it, found it to be a report on the electrical installation stating that there is no bond on the gas meter and the Earth Fault Loop Impedance is more than 200 Ohms. (not surprising really) and this paper was dated November 2010 !!!! So, here we are two years later and still these issues have not been addressed !!!
My builder mate asked me what it all meant & I explained it to him in very simple terms that basically it was a very unsatisfactory condition to say the least. He then phoned the property owner - an absentee landlord - and told him what we thought. His reply was "Well it's been working all this time with no problems ......"
Meanwhile - while all this has been going on - our other mate who is a gas fitter was removing the gas fire in the lounge because it was in a dangerous condition !!!
So there we have it ... the landlord is happy to accept and act upon the findings & advice of the gas fitter, but not those of the electrician !!! :banghead:
You're pushing me over the edge.
