How common is reversed polarity?

[ipf]

One of our lads (many moons ago) decided to get the tails the wrong way round on one of the jobs that the NICEIC man was having a look at for our annual assessment!

Impressed you found it, then?

 

[ED17]

Impressed you found it, then?

It was one of a block of four flats and the lads managed to sort it while the NICEIC man was watching me testing a ring (rather slowly) in another flat!

 

[FatAlan]

Saw a DNO engineer get tails the wrong way round when fitting an isolator. Fortunately he picked it up when testing.

 

[pc1966]

An interesting amount of feedback, I am surprised by some of it but at least it is good to see cases like that when they test, discover the mistake, and fix it before it is used for real!

 

[Micktw68]

Looking over the best practice guide to electrical inspection condition reporting the C1 "danger present" conditions are basically exposed live parts or reversed polarity. I guess the seriousness of reversed polarity is the lack of any meaningful over-current protection for faults to earth.

This forum's thread on dodgy pictures has several examples of exposed wires, etc, but how often have any of you seen a case of L & N swapped at the consumer unit?

Only seen it once after DNO did a meter change. Only identified by homeowner when the boiler started burning out PCBs