Communal Meters & Seals

[Friedapple]

I am in a residential block of 5 flats and have been told that to have various bits of work carried out, the seals of each of the 5 meters needs to be removed. That means that each account holder of each flat has to arrange for an engineer to attend on the same day to remove the relevant seal. Does this sound correct? It sounds crazy that 5 engineers would have to visit. Is there another way for the electrician to obtain permission to do this themselves? What if for example the building had 100 flats? The electrician couldn't expect all 100 flats to coordinate seals to be removed on the same day.
Thanks!

 

[Spoon]

various bits of work carried out,

Welcome to the forum mate.
What bits of work are they carrying out?

 

[James]

I think a bit more detail is required, if you have the contract for one of the meters (the landlord supply maybe)?
Then just ask for that seal to be removed for work to be carried out and suggest to the person on the phone that the following meter numbers will have to be dealt with at the same time.

 

[davesparks]

I assume this is something like the replacement of a multi-way cutout? And probably by a contractor as the DNO would usually be able to connect to and re-seal the meters (unless its UKPN who like to cause as much hassle as possible for everybody).

 

[7029 dave]

Hi you might have a situation where the network is owned by the BNO (building network operator), which is a network past the DNO demarcation point.
Meters owned by the energy suppliers can be imbedded within that network so technically are the ones only authorised to cut seals.
Normally in such set up you would have a red link /meter/ isolator before it terminates to the customer equipment.
The easiest option if say it was for the whole block would be to letter each tenant and get the DNO to shut down the whole supply.

But as you mention only 5 flats that might not be an option.

 

[Friedapple]

Thanks for the feedback so far, much appreciated. It sounds like a bit more detail would be helpful, so I've attached a couple of images and the detail from the electrician:

Each flat has its own meter, provided by your supplier. I need to remove the old cables that are currently supplying that meter to replace them, that can’t be done without their seals being removed.

The fuse seals are the property of the DNO, power comes from them into your meter. As with the meter seals, I cannot work on those cables without the seal being removed.

Over the years, at the hands of multiple electricians, the installation ( from the suppliers cut out to the armoured cables going to each flat) has been left in a condition that is not satisfactory. We intend to fix it.

To do so, we around need to run new 25mm tails to each isolator, replace the isolators and replace the trunking in which all of this is contained. This work cannot be done whilst live and would need the fuse pulled from the DNO cut out. These fuses, however, have a seal on to prevent them being removed, this would need to be done by the supplier.

 

[newfutile]

Sse used to have a scheme to let electricians full single phase fuses and reseal them, i have not heard of any others doing this.

 

[marconi]

 

[timhoward]

To be honest I think you are fairly lucky to have found someone willing to take on that lot as it's a non trivial and high pressure job and involves liaising with lots of people.

As an aside this I don't think I've seen MICC terminated like this in mid-air before, and it leaves me wondering (mainly) about the earthing arrangements.

 

[davesparks]

To be honest I think you are fairly lucky to have found someone willing to take on that lot as it's a non trivial and high pressure job and involves liaising with lots of people.

As an aside this I don't think I've seen MICC terminated like this in mid-air before, and it leaves me wondering (mainly) about the earthing arrangements.
View attachment 100331

It's earthed in the normal way via the gland onto the metal trunking. They've just put the pot on it closer to where it connects to save stripping it back all the way to the gland and having long tails.