Opinions please - leaking service head

[peterhyper]

I went to a customers house to give a quote for a new consumer unit, and noticed the leak from incoming supplier. I advised the customer to contact her electricity provider who would resolve it, and hopefully upgrade the earth.

Lady emailed me today to say UK power netwroks came and gave it the all clear and said the leak is an old one and consistent with the 'era' of the house so no action required.

I don't consider this to be acceptable, and whenever I have had the same/similar issues in the past, the electricity provider has sorted it.

I would appreciate anyones opinions as to whether you think this is okay to be left as is:

 

[static zap]

A symptom of lack of "pride " in job ?
( Not wanting to get involved in a tidy up -to prove historic ,
and not ongoing )
... Money /time saving due to economic pressures .

 

[R-fur]

It probably is ok if UKPN have checked it and said it is ok. However it does not look very pretty. I would give it a couple of weeks and ask the lady to phone again saying there is a smell of burning coming from the cut out, that usually works. The other thing you can do with cutouts and cable boxes is to write the date on a sheet of A4 paper, put it in a poly pocket and leave it on the floor below the leak. After a while you can check it again to see how much compound has leaked in a known time frame.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

That looks like pitch leaking (from within the head), not compound (from within the service cable). There's no indication that the cable sealing is compromised and letting in moisture, however the connection to the fuse and/or neutral block may have run hot at some time (or may be hot now) and that has melted the pitch. Alternatively, it might just have flowed out by itself over a long period of time. I.e. it could be anything from a non-issue that took 25 years to form, or signs of a bad connection. The above advice is good.

 

[sparks1234]

Its not uncommon unfortunately and quite unsitely, we have just had the same on a commercial site with the head rated at 100 amp fuses but we were only pulling about 70, the supplier couldn't give a stuff

 

[SparkyAndGeorge]

If you do win the work, note on certificate log number, dates, times and names of people you spoke to at the DNO.

 

[Percyprod]

This was a regular call when I worked for DNO. Not usually dangerous, but very unsightly and messy. With one in this condition a jointer would usually go out and strip the cut-out down, use a blow torch to melt as much of the pitch off as possible, clean it all up and fit new cut-out.

 

[PEG]

There are several reasons,why there could be dribbles. Regardless of how cool you think the head is,the compound will move,due to gravity,as anyone who has left a card wrapped keg of pitch,on it's side...

An example of this,can be seen,if you ever get an old piece of plain glass,and measure the difference in thickness,between the top and bottom edges,using a micrometer.

 

[baldelectrician]

We call Scottish Power (the local DNO up here) several times a month (EICR's for landlords)
I have called 3-4 times in the past 2-3 years about a tar leak issue and all times bar 1 the cable head has been replaced- usually the same day.

 

[KennyKen]

Nothing a bit of Denzo tape wouldn’t fix. ??

 

[R-fur]

Lucien Nunes, you are correct, I was using the terms pitch and compound interchangeably.
Peg, I think I am right in saying Lord Kelvin placed a cube of pitch on a sloping board in Glasgow university and over the last 100 years it has slowly changing into a tear drop shape, proving that pitch is a fluid. I believe this is one of the longest running experiments in the world.

 

[peterhyper]

Thanks all for the replies. Perhaps I've always been lucky in the past when I've advised customers to contact their electricity provider with similar issues and they've always had them corrected. Maybe it's just luck of the draw who turns up, but might also be cost cutting.

I'm replacing the consumer unit in a couple of weeks, so I will go through the customer's options.

 

[7029 dave]

Leaking pitch, I would be concerned if it smelt of burning around the area.As the DNO have been out and said all good its their responsibility.

They are over filled sometimes, hence the leakage.