Electrical circuit on wet walls

[Irisheyes]

I'm not an electrician but I am very much hoping someone on this forum will be kind enough to answer a worry that I have about wiring in a damp semi basement situation.

I had tanking work carried out to my kitchen walls and floors because it is below ground level and there was water ingress. The remedial works involved all the wiring being stripped out when the render was taken off the walls. The walls were taken back to bare (wet!) brick and the electrician then mounted the new wires directly on the wet walls with no tanking material behind.

I was worried about this, but he assured me this was not a problem. After the wiring was tanked over the damp problems continued and there had to be remedial works to the tanking. At this point the electrician took the opportunity to re-route some of his wires so that they were in effect above ground level. BUT two wires are still live and still below ground level with no tanking material behind.

My concerns are two-fold. 1. I'm worried about electric shocks. 2. I'm worried about the tanking material being pierced. (Maybe i ought to be worried about fire risks too?)

(All this was in the days of 16th Edition of Wiring Regs by the way.)

I have been searching this site for clues but have been unable to find anything about installing wiring circuits on damp walls and in association with water proofing materials. In reading other posts though I've managed to find yet another issue to be worried about!

That is, that my dishwasher (which was installed new on completion of all the remedial works) keeps causing the fuse to trip out every time it's switched on at the wall. The socket for this dishwasher is below ground level and although the backbox probably has water proofing tanking material behind it the vertical wire that supplies it defintely doesn't have tanking material behind it. Could damp in the wire be what is causing my dishwasher to trip out the fuse? If I leave the wall switch on all the time it doesn't trip out, but if I forget myself and turn it off then it trips out the next time I use the dishwasher.

I'd be very grateful for any advice anyone can give me.

Thank you.

P.S. When I say "fuse" I mean all the kitchen sockets go off and I have to throw up a switch at the fusebox to turn them back on again - I don't mean I have to change a fuse in the plug. Sorry for my lack of techie speak.

 

[pushrod]

I would suspect a good electrician can fairly easily do a few tests( eg insulation test) which will quickly let you know what problems there are.

 

[desertbootz]

Whilst the cable insulation ought to be waterproof the joints and connections might not be and damp, as we know, has a tendency to creep. I lived in a basement flat with the CCU in a very damp cupboard and not only did the power dump out repeatedly in Winter (Insulation resistance fail) to add injury to insult I used to get a belt when I tried to reset the MCB! FYI the solution in that case a partial rewire of the affected ccts... surface mounted :O)

As pushrod wisely said, best get a sparky in to determine the root cause

 

[Irisheyes]

Thanks very much all.

 

[lurch]

agree surface mount "could" be the solution, howver the mere fact hat you need to drill the wall to get yer fixing is gonna break the damp proofing.

I had a similar situation on a smaller scale . . . . the only successfull way to beat the damp was to build a stud wall out from the tanked wall, in complete isolation from the problem and then cabling was run in the stud work. Good luck!!