Creative earthing and a few other crimes

[Robin0577]

I've been working on a house today that was built in the '30s, rewired in the '60s(ish), hacked about a bit in the '90s and had an extension built in the '00s. Each stage of modification has been visited by the bodge fairy...

The folks who built the extension evidently discovered the lack of earthing on the lighting circuit and came up with this solution...

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(ignore the yellow flex on the left, that's powering my work lights)

Yes, that is a bit of CAT5 data cable, the other end goes here...

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Only that's on the outlet side of a plastic tank and has dubious continuity with the water main.

Then there are the single unsheathed cores buried direct in the plaster...

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A plethora of crappy joints...

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Oh, and a few bits they never bothered to rewire at all...

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All on a 15 amp 3036 rewirable fuse, no RCDs in sight and the main earth is the lead water main. DNO are coming on Monday to see if they can supply a PME connection. New lighting circuits will be supplied via 2x 5 amp fused RCD spur units for now until I can convince the owner to open up the can of worms that doing an EICR for a new CU will be. I haven't looked at the socket circuits yet, and I hear there's power in the garage. I can't wait to see that, at the house end it's attached to a circa 1950s double pole switchfuse....

Do I get "dodgy find of the week" or can someone top this mess?

 

[Adam_151]

There is only one way to go with the existing and that is to tell the owner it needs a re-wire, in writing, pointing out the risks with the existing installation.

It sounds like you are installing a couple of new lighting circuits. The RCD spurs would end up being wasted money if the re-wire of the existing happens. I'd would recommend after making the owner aware of the state of it, to recommend to him that you install a new consumer unit (amd3 compliant) with plenty of spare ways adjacent the existing one. Split tails with henleys. That way when the re-wire goes ahead new circuits can be connected to the new board and at the end the old one can be removed

 

[Robin0577]

Owner is aware and already going for a full rewire of the lighting circuits, there was never any question of repairing them.

Sadly there isn't space in amongst the assortment of old fuseboxes to put in a new CU first and move things over, so it's going to have to be inspect and repair all circuits, then do the CU change.

 

[Adam_151]

I don't envy you in trying to repair the existing, the more you sort the more you will find

Watch out for the vermiculite though, some of it was contaminated by natural asbestos deposits, take appropiate precautions