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Author Topic: Electrical Safety  (Read 10826 times)

Offline Tech12

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Electrical Safety
« on: July 28, 2015, 05:12:33 pm »
Guys: I've said it before in many places, but will do so again on here. If your getting any sort of Electrical work done, Please get it done by a Reputable & Skilled Electrician.
I went to a fault call this morning where the RCD was reported as tripping in the customers garage & wouldn't re-set, turned out that not only were the sockets wired in 1mm 3 core lighting cable but there was a major fault on the lights. When I accessed the attic above the garage I could see why, there are 4 lights in the garage but in the attic there were 15 connections of 1 sort or another, mostly open & just waiting to go bang. All this done by a friend of his, who's apparently an "Industrial Electrician".
This is just 1 of many I've seen over the years & they seem to be getting more frequent as the economy gets worse.


So Beware.
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Offline MVacs

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2015, 08:16:42 pm »
All this done by a friend of his, who's apparently an "Industrial Electrician".

Those 'industrial electricians' must come from the same place all the "ex Dyson engineers" do who flog crap on Gumtree/eBay, and sometimes in shops, whose bodges we fix quite often.


Offline Tech12

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2015, 08:27:27 pm »
Quite possibly mate. I know it's all extra work for us clearing up the mess, but some of these people are lethal.
I'm still not sure how this garage hasn't gone up in smoke, just glad their RCD worked.
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Offline Madrat

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2015, 08:55:21 pm »
Always do my own, I know its done properly then.


Offline beko1987

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2015, 12:23:17 am »
I dont do house stuff,  would change a socket if the power was down,  or anything sort of 'move one wire at a time'.

I know we disagree on removing rf supressors but your post does highlight why i dont do anythimg more.

Few things I have done though...

When we moved in the light pendant in evas room was broken,  and the wire hanging by the inners.  I bought one,  and with the help of a mate,  and taking pics ala my normal threads so I can be sure how it goes,  set about changing it.

Unscrew,  remove,  going well.  Mmm,  this cables a bit short... Slight inquisitive tug (we had killed the whole house power,  dont worry)  and suddenly Im holding a bit of stripped out cable and a wrapped up bundle of insulation tape... Wtf

Up in the loft,  which wasnt boarded by this point,  scurry about by torchlight,  find the cable.  Ffs,  its been extended by wrapping wires up and a bit of tape,  then thrown back under the insulation.  Via re routing tje cable,  which was easy it reached,  and we fixed the massive bodge!

I do telecome wiring too.  At our old flat,  amys bt engineer brother in law came round with a bag full of bt kit and banged us a long extention though whilst we drank beer.  I learnt.

We move in here,  and the wirings from the 80s. Points are in the hall and bedroom.  Router goes up in the bedroom and we get 2.6mb down.

We moved out of our old flat on bad terms,  so I removed this extention,  and the sky dish and twin cable.  Found where the entry point is,  and had a look.  A very crappy bt61a box was found,  so,  2 jelly crimps,  a removal of the laminate edging,  whichbwent down better after,  i ran this line into the front room (its just thrown down behind all the furniture on the main run).  Bro in law fitted a master socket in the flat,  so I wired that up with a piss easy guide from the net,  and it sits on the floor behind the telly with all the other wires.  Phone and router plug right in,  pre filtered too.

Boom,  16.4mb! And the phone sounded better.  Havent removed the old wiring up the stairs as we rent,  so possibly a ster too far,  and its properly blended in under decades of gloss.  I fitted a return to the hall socket,  the cable goes in,  has a big loop around it (pre stripped of sheathing as it would be a right pain to do down there in that small space)  and straight back out again.  The day we move out,  I go into there,  snip the cable and just wire the old system back in,  and take the kit,  minus half a metre of cat5 to our new house!
Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline Tech12

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2015, 08:24:33 am »
You've done a few basic jobs in your house & took the time to take plenty of pictures & probably notes as well, took your time & got it done  :thumbsup:. But to your credit, nowhere in that did you decide that it made you a competent electrician & that you could now go out & charge people to do their wiring. From the state of the wiring in this garage, all I can say is: God help industry if that's the quality of Electrician they have nowadays.


Your still wrong about the filters though  ;) :underchair:
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Offline Madrat

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #6 on: July 29, 2015, 12:16:42 pm »
Lol

Offline beko1987

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2015, 12:29:51 pm »
I assisted my stepdad once in adding another socket to the end of a ring, using older non dated cable thats been in the garage for a few years so if it was inspected he could argue that the wrings been in place for years, he just changed the socket faceplate.

When I was going to wire up our shed, I did think about buying some outdoor rated cable, length of old hose, some clips and running it down the bottom of the fence, above the concrete panels that sit under the fence to the shed, with a 13a plug on one end, a single socket on the shed end, then a 4 way flying lead into that, so there's a few fuses to blow should the worse happen. Was only planning to charge my phone, charge the laptop, run a small striplight and fire up the odd cleaner. That hasn't happened, and tbh probably wont as the shed is too small to be any use as a workshop. Was my train of thought ok, or stupidly dangerous?

Would just have the cable looped round for a water drip runoff, unto the house behind the tv then plugged into the wall, unplugging it when not in the shed, possibly behind a normal plug in RCD.
Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline Tech12

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2015, 01:43:43 pm »
If your stepdad  has wiring of 2 different colours, I.e Red / Black & Blue / Brown you need to attach a warning label at the consumer unit. If you just used the old cable because you still had some then that's not really a problem. As long as it's installed properly, then it's still perfectly safe.

Running your shed like that, then really all your doing is creating an extension lead, so that's not a problem :thumbsup:. All you need to remember is that the cable needs to be thick enough for the load & length of run, but a minimum csa of 1.5 mm. Running inside a pipe & leaving a drip loop both ends are good ideas. If your house sockets are already protected by an RCD or RCBO then there's no need for an extra RCD on the extension lead as it's already protected.
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Offline beko1987

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2015, 01:46:15 pm »
I remember the wire colours being the same tbh, it's an older house. Still working fine 12 years later!

All I do for the shed now is run the extention lead out the odd time I need to vac it out. With my old crap henry I replaced the cable with an old flymo lead, which reached from the house right up the garden and out onto the road. Need the extension reel out for the crap aquamaster I have now though, but wont replace teh cable on that.
Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline Tech12

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2015, 01:54:50 pm »
I remember the wire colours being the same tbh, it's an older house. Still working fine 12 years later!

Sorry buddy, I misread what you said. For some reason i thought you were adding old colours to new, there was nothing wrong with the old cable or colours. The only reason we changed was to bring us into line with the europeans.
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Offline beko1987

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #11 on: July 29, 2015, 02:02:38 pm »
Sounds about right. I do remember my stepdad specifically finding this cable just in case it was inspected in the future he could just say 'always been there, never touched the wiring'

I know that when we decorated their room, and had the carpets up we lifted a floorboard and ran a long 4 way under the floor and back out by their dressing table to save putting another socket in. Has the TV, sky box they have for freesat and the odd hairdryer in, cable comes out the floor by the 1 socket in the room.

When we were young and I shared a room with my hateful stepbrother we probably took the piss with 2 pc's, stereo, tv and laptops all running out of 1 double socket, all on 24/7... Wouldnt do that now!

By our TV corner we have 2 4 ways, 1 for each socket. One is a switchless one that's thrown behind with the sky box, router, phone and fish tank light plugged in 24/7, and I screwed a switched 4 way ont othe side of the tv unit for the tv, dvd, hifi and other stuff that can be switched off. SWMBO still tells me off if I plug an extension into that extention, even if just to charge my phone or run a low wattage cleaner. That's safe isnt it? Daisy chained worse off leads and didnt die...
Collector and restorer of vintage vacuums, Dyson Appreciator! Come and see my blog, where I am uploading all my mountains of brochures, manuals and other vacuum cleaner paperwork, and also my youtube channel @beko1987!

Offline Tech12

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #12 on: July 29, 2015, 02:38:30 pm »
As long as your using quality extension leads & not overloading the wall socket, I.e using more than the rated 13a then I don't see any problems arising. Please don't think as some do: It's a 32 amp circuit, so that's what you can draw from a socket. The max Safe loading of any Single or Double socket is 13a & if on a Ring main the maximum safe loading of the total ring is 32a.
Radial circuits are a whole different ball game.

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Offline Madrat

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #13 on: July 29, 2015, 04:28:55 pm »
We have daisy chain 4 and 6 way extensions everywhere, not enough sockets in this house.  Refused a rewire off the council as they don't sink the wires, just put them in white plastic conduit  >:(  How that can be considered safe enough I will never know.

Offline Tech12

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Re: Electrical Safety
« Reply #14 on: July 29, 2015, 06:28:10 pm »
Apart from looking ugly on the wall or ceiling, PVC trunking is perfectly safe & functional. It makes life easier if you have to alter circuits at a later date & you know where the cables are run. When cables are buried they're not very deep & usually only covered with a thin PVC capping that nails will easily pierce, you also have the problem of not knowing exactly where cables are run. From the customers point of view  it's a quicker install & has the advantage of being a whole lot less messy.
Repairs to All makes of Small Commercial & Domestic appliance. Power tool repair.
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