Tell us about your faults!

[kung]

Hi ALL
Just thought id put this one up for all those faults we find.
heres one to kick it off !
Domestic RCD tripped and wouldnt reset cause was a blown low energy light bulb.
There you go now for yours !

 

[scotsparky]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

I found my record today.. 2 double sockets and 2 13A spurs ran in 2.5 all spured of the same point of a ring ( unfused spur off.) I t was during a PIR so code 1nd it do you think this is harsh?

 

[empress]

Re: What is the current carrying capacity of 1.5mm2!!!!

Came across this set up today in a void I was working in seems like the previous tenant didnt want to pay for his electricity so he decided to link out the meter and the ony cable he could find was the 1.5mm2 you see in the picture !!!!
I was very impressed with his VDE clothes pegs I must see if my supplier stocks them .

View attachment 2489

pure class, should be a challenge on the "cube"

 

[davelerave]

Re: What is the current carrying capacity of 1.5mm2!!!!

Came across this set up today in a void I was working in seems like the previous tenant didnt want to pay for his electricity so he decided to link out the meter and the ony cable he could find was the 1.5mm2 you see in the picture !!!!
I was very impressed with his VDE clothes pegs I must see if my supplier stocks them .

View attachment 2489

in fairness-he got a pass mark


-good contact on one side

-and he linked the right wires

 

[chloebear]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Ok here's mine for this week - working at the YMCA (no singing - or dancing) shifting a socket outlet to make way for a new doorway. Noticed (as you do) that there was a spur wired off to the side out of the backbox into the metal framed cavity wall with no sign of a socket outlet in that direction anywhere. So tugged at the cable to see if I could guage where it went, and it started to free up, so tugged some more and HEY-PRESTO out pops the end of the cable - BARE ENDS (and I mean BARE and stripped back ends) live and fizzing just left in the wall. Boy God moves in mysterious ways to keep his own safe & sound.

 

[empress]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Ok here's mine for this week - working at the YMCA (no singing - or dancing) shifting a socket outlet to make way for a new doorway. Noticed (as you do) that there was a spur wired off to the side out of the backbox into the metal framed cavity wall with no sign of a socket outlet in that direction anywhere. So tugged at the cable to see if I could guage where it went, and it started to free up, so tugged some more and HEY-PRESTO out pops the end of the cable - BARE ENDS (and I mean BARE and stripped back ends) live and fizzing just left in the wall. Boy God moves in mysterious ways to keep his own safe & sound.

yep know the feeling was testing a property on monday .
no continuity on one of the ring mains was a bungalow so traced to the area of break and went up in loft to find one end of the ring in mid air with ends stripped .
been like that for 25 years!

 

[adam.h]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

makes you wonder what the person was thinking when they stripped the cables only to walk away and forget about it.

 

[empress]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

makes you wonder what the person was thinking when they stripped the cables only to walk away and forget about it.

in this case the other leg of the ring went down to a socket and the stripped end was next to the drop.
i can only assume they had left it to short and were going to put a junction box on it making the other socket a spur.
must of been pint o'clock and they forgot all about it!

 

[adam.h]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Best to strip them only when you plan on connecting them up to something, or at least put a connector block on the end lol.

 

[white spark]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Went to an old boys house, he wanted an outside socket and a light run from the exisiting supply in the garage. On the phone he confirmed a mini rcd consumer unit already set up in the garage. Nice and easy methinks!
Turned out while he did have a nice little board in the garage it was supplied by a piece of 2.5 t&e running from the roof of the garage about 8 foot in the air and spanning about 12 foot to the side of the house and was spurred off the back of a socket on the upstairs ring. The cable had no form of support in the air either apart from the cable itself.
He wasn't interested in an upgrade and insisted it had been fine like that for years. I explained the dangers and turned down the job.
This was a week or so ago. I think he must have had someone else in who confirmed the same thing and he has called me back to quote for a swa replacement to main board!

 

[TPES]

I had done a CU change recently, a few days after the customer rings me up at half 7 in the morning to say his power has gone out.
He explained on the phone that his wife was pulling the bathroom pullcord on and off rapidly which was why the lighting circuit had tripped, I told him to go back to the CU and flick the MCB back on, he said to me that it is on but still no power, sounding very unhappy and having abit of a dig as if this was somehow my fault, I said I'm on my way straight over to check it out, so I started the 45 min drive, half way there the customer rings to say it's sorted, and I'm sorry,

he thought if the breaker was down it was on and if it was up it's off!

 

[nickblake]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Now is he the guy with the very high hair do , what a numpty

 

[High Tower]

Look at this bunch of kack I got called out to, (second breaker from the left burnt) swapped it out for a spare way a few places down and promised to return another day to tidy it all up

 

[Sparky Ninja]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Here's a board from a periodic I did a while back.. just starting to carry out remedials.

 

[Sparky Ninja]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Also, here are some pics from my cousins house that was rewired by a housing association prior to him moving in.

 

[Sparky Ninja]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

And here is the quality certification to go with it

 

[Sintra]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Those pics look as if they were taken before the rewire absolutely dog rough, have you showed the housing association the quality work that their contractors leave behind?

 

[Sparky Ninja]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

have you showed the housing association the quality work that their contractors leave behind?

Well yes & no. It wasn't a contractor. It was the actual housing associations full time staff. I took the original cert back to their maintenance yard to ask for the QS to be handed the report so he can review it, sign it off and return it to the householder. The guy slammed the door in my face when he noticed the NICEIC badge on my sleeve and twigged I was a sparky, saying tenants only.

So I took the cert to the headoffice a mile down the road and reported it in there. They took the certs and gave me colour copies to return to the address temporarily.


This was around this time last year, I saw my cousin back in May and he hasn't received or heard anything regarding the certs or their installation.




The whole place is a qucik fix and nothing has been done with consideration. I particularly like how they didn't bother to put the screws back in the saddles, and how the extract fan in the loft isn't ducted. This company is fairly large, I see there vans quite often round my way.

 

[kung]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Could be a good email to NICEIC for their next assessment visit ! if thats the standard of work they want it will be intresting to see what they'd pay for a good tidy spark wouldnt it ? and just look at the ordasity of the bastedo who done it in your 2nd batch of pics in pic 14 hes even threw some tinsel down as if to say merry ******* christmas ! the greaseballs !

 

[m25maintenance]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

jesus, some shocking work there. niceic my ***, they only see ££££££££

 

[Ohmyword]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Mate rang me last week with an "electrical emergency".
RCD fault narrowed down to downstairs ring with live earth short.
Took a few socket fronts off and found a pattress FULL of dirty orange slime and.........

A freshly fried slug accross the terminals!!!!!!!!

gotta start takin me camera to work!

I've had this one more than once ))

 

[keniff]

No surprises there.... Classic house bashers doing council rewires? Lol

 

[Ohmyword]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

I've had most of these listed on here, I reckon, over my 43 years in the trade.
1 or 2 classics; two consumer units in a village shop, one mounted above the other. Some numpty had wired a 2.5mm T&E cable out of the load side of a rewirable fuse way of one board, feeding it into the load side of another way in the other board. CRAZY.
I recently went to a shop unit to carry out some work and discovered that the consumer unit tails had been wired cross polarity. So how could anyone have carried out any live tests on the original installation?

 

[Ohmyword]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Just been reading a few more posts on this thread and it reminded me of the reason and fine example of why you should always listen to a child.
A few years back when heating firms didn't try to nick our work, I was called in by the "lady of the house" to install the power supply for her new wall hung gas boiler.
When I arrived to carry out an inspection the frame for the boiler was already screwed to the wall.
The mains c/u was in an under stairs cupb. (with the gas supply) adjacent to the boiler position.
In chatting to the plumbers and the lady about how to get the supply in etc., her young son said that he had "got a tickle" from the kitchen sink or the gas cooker (I can't remember now). She dismissed him, telling me he must have imagined it.
I believe that children don't tell lies (why would he make something like that up?).
With just my mains probes to start with I was able to get a full 240V. reading from two sources in the kitchen.
I eventually found out (after shutting down the plumbers) that the boiler frame's fixings had pierced most of the circuit wires for the house.
Who ever worked on the boiler was not making a circuit as he was kneeling on the worktop.
I explained to them and the householder that there would probably be no problem for anyone - until they carried out the final connection to the gas meter. Someone could have died and/or blown the end of the house out.

 

[Ohmyword]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

I had to sort out and re-wire some store buildings on a farm.
How much do you charge for saving someone's life? Some burke had connected a 13A. socket with the Live cable connected on the Earth terminal.

 

[rocker]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

My old gaffer told me about a guy he knew who supp bonded a stainless steel sink to the live terminal in a spur.

He'd been doing the job well for 20 years, and this day just had a bad day, maybe didn't get enough sleep and made a mistake. He wasn't ----ed or stoned he just made a mistake.

Unfortunately a woman died, and the guy went to prison. No punchline on this one, I'm afraid.

 

[Ohmyword]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Ok here's mine for this week - working at the YMCA (no singing - or dancing) shifting a socket outlet to make way for a new doorway. Noticed (as you do) that there was a spur wired off to the side out of the backbox into the metal framed cavity wall with no sign of a socket outlet in that direction anywhere. So tugged at the cable to see if I could guage where it went, and it started to free up, so tugged some more and HEY-PRESTO out pops the end of the cable - BARE ENDS (and I mean BARE and stripped back ends) live and fizzing just left in the wall. Boy God moves in mysterious ways to keep his own safe & sound.

Went to a property where customer experiencing problems with E.L.C.B. tripping out.
Soon realised it was one of the ring-mains. "Splitting the ring" I was able to isolate the problem to a socket in a downstairs room. Nothing wrong with the appearance of the cables behind the socket. Then the customer informs me that some weeks previous he nailed a tack into the wall above the socket to hang a picture - it blew the trip so he removed it and everything was o.k. I was able to lift a piece of flooring above the socket and proceeded to pull one cable up through the conduit, it emerged sparking and fizzing on the end. Cable was burnt black and still smouldering. I had to calmly ask the customer to go downstairs and isolate the consumer unit for me.

 

[kung]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Gee ! safe isolation

 

[m25maintenance]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

y did u not iso the circuit if u were working on it, but i did d same thing under a shower floor, pulled out a live cable

 

[allroundhunter]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Mad next door must have more money than scense not even to quibble the bill lol mad but funny story.

 

[Jurassic Sparks]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

whilst rewiring a house, the owner decided to start using the chasing machine to do the cuts in the sitting room ( he was helping to keep his costs down)
I told him to wait till I arrived in case ( had found rubber cables with no cpc on new sockets!!!)
I arrived and he said he had turned off the supply to the lights and was going to chase for the sockets
heard a flash bang and found him on the floor
some muppet had used the supply from the night storage heater to run the wall lights , also wire were sellotaped behind the plaster and run horizontally?
lucky he was ok but now understood the reason I told him to wait for me to check, always test then remove fuse adn test again
I am bound never to tell any one about it, but he is the senior safety officer for my old employer!!!
I pull his leg about it even now