are these substations

[tr87]

are the buildings in the picture substations?, how danerous actually are these places. as i saw a group of kids poking sticks through one, could you get killed if you stuck something in 1 of the grills on them.

 

[Guest111]

yes they are subs and yes if you stuck something long enough through the door you could be killed,high voltages can flash over you don,t need to touch live parts.

 

[trev]

You know that sign they put up on subs? "Keep Out, Danger Of Death"
They don't put that on them just for a giggle you know

 

[alarm man]

copper thief?

 

[WPD Lad]

yes they are subs and yes if you stuck something long enough through the door you could be killed,high voltages can flash over you don,t need to touch live parts.

There won't be any HV live conductors exposed in a distribution (secondary) sub, only the LV frame, still not a good idea to stick things through the door!

 

[tr87]

No im not a copper thief thanks, i was just concerned where 1 of them is, as its right nr a school bus stop where i live nr and its just ive seen kids poking rubbish etc through the door. i was just wondering how dangerous these places actually are.

so this is a distribution sub i guess with no exposed parts inside and is preety saf?

 

[Dan the spark]

Poking rubbish through the door won't kill you, not many enclosed subs around now that have open busbars in them. Went in one a while back and that was behind a hoarding, don't know why but still got that little feeling in the pit of my stomach every time I walked past it

 

[Dan the spark]

Love the way that google maps caught the dno hard at work as usual lol

 

[infinity]

In my opinion you could not stick anything through the door and get a shock! i used to work for SSE been in many substations, you would struggle to find something to touch that could injure really, mainly switching etc in larger ones. smaller ones mainly just feeder pillers enclosed!

 

[Knobhead]

In my opinion you could not stick anything through the door and get a shock! i used to work for SSE been in many substations, you would struggle to find something to touch that could injure really, mainly switching etc in larger ones. smaller ones mainly just feeder pillers enclosed!

The voice of reason.

I’ve kept out of this discussion, waiting for a sensible answer.

 

[tr87]

this is the substation im a little concerned about, as you see the small brick building was vandalised but has now been boarded up, also the gate is now left open/been damaged

the transformer? in the fence is still there though, (its got a like spring thing nr the bottom of it if thats helps identifiy it has a transformer). if you poked a e.g metal object through the fence and managed to touch this would you get a shock. as said ive seen children walking past pokign stick throguh the fence.

 

[DurhamSparky]

IMO the sub is probably disused and no longer operational

the DNO have a LEGAL duty to maintain live equipment and so and so...!

 

[Fin170]

Dicking with substations? I'll dust off my suit and prepare my Darwin award presentation

 

[johnboy6083]

As others have stated, there will be no live parts exposed, however i wouldn't go looking!

 

[Knobhead]

I’ve taken the photo in to photoshop and still can’t get a good look see.

But from what I can make out it’s disused, the transformer bay is empty. The LV O/H line could still be live with the Lucy pole fuses removed.

A good photograph would help.

 

[WPD Lad]

You'd certainly get a belt off the LV frame! Live exposed busbars and tx links

 

[Knobhead]

Like it! Not seen one of those for years.
View attachment 10945
This is one I used to work on.

 

[Mark_Burgess]

Like it! Not seen one of those for years.
View attachment 10945
This is one I used to work on.

Thats ridiculous, where are you supposed to lean against when thinking or drinking?

 

[WPD Lad]

Like it! Not seen one of those for years.
View attachment 10945
This is one I used to work on.

Jesus, that's got to be worked on dead, surely!

We've got open busbar link boxes on our network and they're all worked on dead!

 

[Knobhead]

We worked on it live. It’s 550V just to add to the fun.

How come there’s no live working on link boxes now? OK their a bit dodgy but if you were quick fitting or removing links the fireworks weren’t to bad. With a four-way box there must be one hell of a lot of disruption.

 

[WPD Lad]

We worked on it live. It’s 550V just to add to the fun.

How come there’s no live working on link boxes now? OK their a bit dodgy but if you were quick fitting or removing links the fireworks weren’t to bad. With a four-way box there must be one hell of a lot of disruption.

It's just the open busbar "calendar" boxes that we have in Birmingham that are made dead, all other link boxes are linked in live. The "calendar" boxes have concentric busbars that are only a couple of cms apart, the insulators are usually in a bad way and the links are big enough to go across the phases.

Normal link boxes with the standard links are fine for normal operation, I'll see if I can dig up a pic of our "calendar" box!

 

[Knobhead]

You’ve just reminded me of the time I spent at EMEB’s Woolaton training centre. I was doing MV jointing, there was another group doing LV. One guy I will never forget, you could see the concentration on his face as he poured the metal over the cores. They were live, you could guarantee his foot would slip back off the mat on to the metal decking. 230V up the stream of metal and through him was funny to watch. The only sympathy he got was you need a f**king light bulb on yer ed!
View attachment 10956
The LV mob were given the instructions for a 4 way box just before we all packed up for the day, they were told to read them before the morning as they would have to crack on to get it finished in a day.
They had to break in to a PILC SWA for two legs of the box and connect a PVC concentric and a PVC SWA that was live and potted. These were the old style boxes were you had sixteen ½“ studs to sweat the cores to with weakbacks.

They did crack on quite well until it got the live cable, there was a lot of swearing and cursing but they all got it finished. Then there was a shout from one of the lads, he’d finally read the last page of the instructions.

UNDER NO CERCUMSTANCES IS ANY PART OF THIS PROCEDURE TO BE CARIED OUT LIVE!

(It should have been the first page).

 

[Knobhead]

Just to give you another laugh. A hot sunny day and even though I was in just shorts and tee shirt I was sweating like a pig. My metal framed glasses were slipping down my nose and in danger of falling in the link box, my mate was pushing my glasses back with an insulated screw driver.

 

[WPD Lad]

Proper jointing. It's all snap on connectors and resin these days, there's no art to it anymore! You can joint in a 4 way link box in no time!

Did you ever see consac cable? Solid alu sheathed neutral earth, it's paid many an engineers mortgages with neutral faults. Smallest nick in the PVC and it puff balls!

 

[Knobhead]

Never worked on CONSAC but I’ve seen it been breach jointed. What a pain in the arse. 3 streets in Nottingham lost the neutral due to a small nick in the outer serving and as you say the sheath puff balling. Cost EMEB a fortune for fried televisions, VCR’s etc. It was the gas board that damaged the cable!

 

[Guest111]

You know that sign they put up on subs? "Keep Out, Danger Of Death"
They don't put that on them just for a giggle you know

I had one of those on my back gate when we had some junkies living a couple of doors away,one nearly found out what it meant one night when i caught him trying to break in luckily for him somebody stopped me.

 

[Knobhead]

Some pictures to give others an idea of what we were rambling about. You may have seen them usually at junctions in the pavement.
View attachment 11022View attachment 11023View attachment 11024

 

[DPG]

Thanks for that Tony. Good thread this. Don't think I'd fancy doing the job though! Daz

 

[Knobhead]

You don’t have to be mad, but it helps. I worked on private networks not for a DNO.
View attachment 11026
To be honest I’m glad I’m out of the game now.

 

[electron1]

Some pictures to give others an idea of what we were rambling about. You may have seen them usually at junctions in the pavement.
View attachment 11022View attachment 11023View attachment 11024

Brings back memories for me when as a Student Apprentice on the then area board NWEB in Blackburn.

 

[Guest111]

we had a link box on the corner of our street and one day it went bang,the woman in the papershop said "oh that thing,its been smoking for hours"didn,t know which was funnier the fact she had watched it and not thought to phone anyone or the message on the smokes i was buying"smoking may damage your health" well it obviously didn,t do the box any good,

 

[UKMeterman]

I know of a similar looking substation where the HV transformer and RMU have been removed from the pad, HOWEVER the LV is now backfed through one of the UG feeders.

 

[WPD Lad]

One very dead link box

 

[Knobhead]

Ooohh Nasty.

RIP!