...the back of your hand?
Refurbishing basement today and removing the ceiling; being an old house there is alot of wiring that is disconnected and can be safely removed, so one of my tasks was to pick apart the installation and find out which of the 50 year old cables I could take out.
One in particular I track back and see it dissappears behind a couple of CUs, one of which is a 12hr switched one for storage heaters (of which we only have one left - about 2m from the CU) and the other the main one for the house.
In my cable there is a junction box joining the two halves: follow usual procedure to test the cable: each core + earth to each other with the meter - 3v or so, induced current, fine - next with the back of the forefinger to make sure - dead as expected.
Must be connected to the heater CU which I isolated earlier.
So I leave the junction box open and proceed with ripping down the rest of the ceiling.
Later on in my wiring investigation I see that the aforementioned cable could not be connected to the heater CU. So I follow it back and check a second junction box in it and sure enough 230v. It is connected to the CU below the heater - I have found the supply for my immersion heater.
Somewhat concerned I dart back to the original junction box, jam the probes in tight and yes 230v that all three tests failed to spot first time round .
I can only assume that the ends and my hands were so dirty and dry the resistance was just too high, either that or I should give up working on electrics since I literally cannot touch a cable right.
Two more finds from today:
One was a ring circuit for the storage heaters - sure, fine, except if I am not mistaken in a ring circuit the phase at the end of the ring is meant to go into the same fuse as the start, not the one next to it...
Also if you ever run out of junction boxes remember two cables can be joined with a ceiling rose... and if that ceiling rose should only have three blocks of connectors instead of the four required no problem, just connect all the commons together, it'll be fine
Refurbishing basement today and removing the ceiling; being an old house there is alot of wiring that is disconnected and can be safely removed, so one of my tasks was to pick apart the installation and find out which of the 50 year old cables I could take out.
One in particular I track back and see it dissappears behind a couple of CUs, one of which is a 12hr switched one for storage heaters (of which we only have one left - about 2m from the CU) and the other the main one for the house.
In my cable there is a junction box joining the two halves: follow usual procedure to test the cable: each core + earth to each other with the meter - 3v or so, induced current, fine - next with the back of the forefinger to make sure - dead as expected.
Must be connected to the heater CU which I isolated earlier.
So I leave the junction box open and proceed with ripping down the rest of the ceiling.
Later on in my wiring investigation I see that the aforementioned cable could not be connected to the heater CU. So I follow it back and check a second junction box in it and sure enough 230v. It is connected to the CU below the heater - I have found the supply for my immersion heater.
Somewhat concerned I dart back to the original junction box, jam the probes in tight and yes 230v that all three tests failed to spot first time round .
I can only assume that the ends and my hands were so dirty and dry the resistance was just too high, either that or I should give up working on electrics since I literally cannot touch a cable right.
Two more finds from today:
One was a ring circuit for the storage heaters - sure, fine, except if I am not mistaken in a ring circuit the phase at the end of the ring is meant to go into the same fuse as the start, not the one next to it...
Also if you ever run out of junction boxes remember two cables can be joined with a ceiling rose... and if that ceiling rose should only have three blocks of connectors instead of the four required no problem, just connect all the commons together, it'll be fine