S
StevieTee
Call out this morning guy saying there was a strong smell of fish coming from the cupboard where his CU was. Trying not to laugh down the phone, I asked him a couple of question and then forced myself to go to investigate for myself.
Turned up and right away strong smell of "fish".
Small single BS3871 CU unitadjacent to the main CU where the smell is really coming from. Its feeding the shower on a 30A breaker 6mm T+E. Check it out and see that part of the plastic has began to melt. Open it up and see that the T+E cable CPC is badly burnt and the sleeving is toast. The CPC coming from the supply end is a 4mm single core going straight to the Henley block where the main earth is. TNC-S system.
Disconnect everything and check the shower switch and the shower itself. Find that an old friend who is now a retired electrician, had connected up the shower and had connected the N and CPC round the wrong way.
Anyways, swaped round, reconnected everything, quick couple of tests to check all in order. Happy days.
My question is, this was done 4 years ago according to the customer, shower does look that old. Anyone any clues as to why it took that long for the fault to develop? Really couldn't get my head around it. Said they use the shower everyone morning for the three of them. Sure this should of started causing problems right away or well before now?
Was also told that last month they had a friend who is an electrician out swapping their oven over who noticed they had no main earth from the cut out to their main CU. He threw in a 16mm cable for this to sort that problem.
Turned up and right away strong smell of "fish".
Small single BS3871 CU unitadjacent to the main CU where the smell is really coming from. Its feeding the shower on a 30A breaker 6mm T+E. Check it out and see that part of the plastic has began to melt. Open it up and see that the T+E cable CPC is badly burnt and the sleeving is toast. The CPC coming from the supply end is a 4mm single core going straight to the Henley block where the main earth is. TNC-S system.
Disconnect everything and check the shower switch and the shower itself. Find that an old friend who is now a retired electrician, had connected up the shower and had connected the N and CPC round the wrong way.
Anyways, swaped round, reconnected everything, quick couple of tests to check all in order. Happy days.
My question is, this was done 4 years ago according to the customer, shower does look that old. Anyone any clues as to why it took that long for the fault to develop? Really couldn't get my head around it. Said they use the shower everyone morning for the three of them. Sure this should of started causing problems right away or well before now?
Was also told that last month they had a friend who is an electrician out swapping their oven over who noticed they had no main earth from the cut out to their main CU. He threw in a 16mm cable for this to sort that problem.
