Discuss whats the worst thing you have seen electrically in the UK Electrical Forum area at ElectriciansForums.net

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dingledong

went to a house split into 2
the lady had bought it "years before but plugged the kettle into the socket in the living room as she sometimes got a shoch of the kettle in the fitchen also the dimmer switch vibrated when you touched it
the cause
when they rewired and did the downstairs up they tiled the kitchen then put a cupboard around the boiler in the kitchen they drilled through the cable so the fuse must of kept tripping
so the disconnected the mains earth so the whole flat was live ,all metalclad switches and sockets were 230v except the gas cooker thats how she was getting belts in the kitchen when she brushed past that
 
Standing on a dance floor in a busy nightclub we do a lot of work in, reaching up and grabbing hold of a mass of insulation tape which turned out too be 6 3 core flex's with the bare ends all just twisted together and taped to power the clubs lighting rig! :) and you could reach that without too much hard work or stretching from the main dance floor!
 
Where do I start? Which country?
 
Standing on a dance floor in a busy nightclub we do a lot of work in, reaching up and grabbing hold of a mass of insulation tape which turned out too be 6 3 core flex's with the bare ends all just twisted together and taped to power the clubs lighting rig! :) and you could reach that without too much hard work or stretching from the main dance floor!
so that would have been like the clubbers getting a new kind of `buzz`...
 
Singles cut off in trunking, left live, 10M up next to crane tracks, me coming along to run my cables - I tell you I was fuming (mentally) - if I had touched it, would have got thrown off for sure, luckily even in poor light my spider senses spotted it just before I stuck my hand in (lucky really) - still makes me mad now what is sometimes left behind for the next poor, under-paid down trodden sparky to come across.
 
All I had to do was unplug a click rose to change a light out, but isolated the circuit anyway. When the job was done turn power back on and all working ok, JOB Done, all that was left to do was fit the large plastic cover on over the click rose plug. This in when I discovered the back box was live !! FP 200 terminated into metal conduit boxes with no earth strap to box, the inner insulation of the FP200 had been damaged making the box live !!
 
Think my all time favourite was in India.. 100KVA set parked up on the pavement outside the venue, bare uncovered buss bars via 4 x M12 studs poking through the housing, general public everywhere walking around this thing. wish I'd had a camera with me at the time.

2nd favourite.... 2 x 125A 4p+E HO7's half way up an Austrian mountain, 'jointed' with gaffa, left thrown in the snow just off to the side of the ski run.

3rd favourite.... [the one that bit me]... Ph <> Ph <> E crossover on a rubber box distro wired by some monkey (me undoubtedly saved by the RCD).
 
Think my all time favourite was in India.. 100KVA set parked up on the pavement outside the venue, bare uncovered buss bars via 4 x M12 studs poking through the housing, general public everywhere walking around this thing. wish I'd had a camera with me at the time.

2nd favourite.... 2 x 125A 4p+E HO7's half way up an Austrian mountain, 'jointed' with gaffa, left thrown in the snow just off to the side of the ski run.

3rd favourite.... [the one that bit me]... Ph <> Ph <> E crossover on a rubber box distro wired by some monkey (me undoubtedly saved by the RCD).

The best ones are always abroad, Sockets in showers to feed fans, Exposed live cables in the street , fuse board covers missing and so on
 
My cousins sister in laws cu melted. So he asked me to call round and change it. No problem I thought; changed the board but the kitchen sockets kept tripping so unplugged everything, starting plugging them in one at a time and sure enough it tripped again. This plug with 0.75 flex disappearing under the work top was the culprit. Turns out she fancies herself as a bit of a DIY-er and wired the new cooker off a plug top instead of the perfectly good cooker sw beside the socket. But it gets worse I opened up the plug top and there was all 3 cores stripped back to where the flex clamp is twisted round one another.
 
Then a week later her heating tripped and wouldn't start up. No power going to the time clock. It's when I was standing there under her stairs looking at the time clock, I noticed the nice new coat hook rail, with nice new screws into it, directly above the time clock. See where I'm going with this!!! Lol
 
Worst thing Ive seen?

cycling around Cork countryside about 12 year ago, bloke next to me hits a pot hole and whoop! Straight over the bars .... Onto his face.

stands up, its like a horror movie, half his face is hanging off, eye socket complete but no eye....skull visible on forehead. We lay him down on my fleece under his head (he's up and walking around moaning), and blood literally pools within seconds around his head. Thought thats it, hes a gonner.

but hes okay and an ambulance turns up (pretty quick) and I watch the paramedics face, she sees Bobs face and has to turn away, she nearly chucks up, not good.


anyway after plastic surgery and a year or two he's ...sort of... Right as rain.


told my mate when home and his reply - " well he wasn't very good looking anyway"


oh! Sorry. Electrically. Missed that :lipsrsealed2:
 
My cousins sister in laws cu melted. So he asked me to call round and change it. No problem I thought; changed the board but the kitchen sockets kept tripping so unplugged everything, starting plugging them in one at a time and sure enough it tripped again. This plug with 0.75 flex disappearing under the work top was the culprit. Turns out she fancies herself as a bit of a DIY-er and wired the new cooker off a plug top instead of the perfectly good cooker sw beside the socket. But it gets worse I opened up the plug top and there was all 3 cores stripped back to where the flex clamp is twisted round one another.
caught on camera`s your best bet for stuff like this...
 

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