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As I said, even loosely draped (I can’t remember any details but the lead exited an old attached brick shed under the eaves, was somehow held up along the top of a timber gate but not attached to the gate itself and then ran along a brick boundary wall, mostly held in place by ivy) the flex was...

When my parents bought their house in 2009 I found an extension lead (H05VV-F) strung along the fence to power a garden room, possibly since 1989. It was still in great condition so I pulled it from the fence and kept using it.

Frankly, in this case the repair wasn‘t that much worse than the original installation.

For 0.75 mm2 flex an 8 mm bit should be well enough.

„Naught conductor“ sounds like a good old dictionary translation of the German „Nullleiter“. The official term these days is „Neutrallleiter“ but most people still use the older term.

The one thing I do find interesting is that all European countries I‘m aware of have a minimum requirement of 1.5 mm2 for mechanical strength in fixed installations (except control circuits). The UK and Ireland are the only exceptions as far as I know.

Is the current circuit on an RCD with other circuits or on its own RCBO? If the latter and it only serves laundry appliances I‘d say spurring off this circuit is fine, otherwise I‘d recommend adding an extra RCBO as JohnD suggested.

For some odd reason they call a 2-way switch „3-way“ and an internediate „4-way“, just like the number of terminals.

Yes, insulation resistance and continuity tests should give a spark a decent idea whether the cable is good or not.

Can you see the cable on the other side of that wall? That would allow an electrician to cut back the frayed end and terminate properly.

In my opinion the difference does matter, an ES27 lamp in an ES26 socket will leave much more screw thread exposed than it should. Yes, that should be connected to the neutral but you aren‘t supposed to have permanently bare neutrals either. French homes these days are required to have DCL...

Many countries using CEE 7 plugs require sockets to be protected at no more than 16 A and all extension leads to be rated at 16 A, so no amount of creative splitting could cause an overload beyond the trip curve of the MCB. There is one exception, power strips with no more than four CEE 7/16...

Spring-loaded terminals have been around since the 1970s and quite a few countries on the continent have been using them almost exclusively for the better part of 30 years (German manufacturers pretty much abandoned sockets with screw terminals when the VDE allowed spring-loaded terminals in...

The downstairs switch has to be wired incorrectly, it only has two wires connected, any 2-way setup would need three. Considering how bad the newer wiring looks I wouldn‘t feel confident going wireless without fixing that lash-up. Time to lift some floor boards I‘m afraid.

I happen to live in a country where over-sleeving isn‘t allowed either (at least for earth, neutral is a bit of a grey area) and the answer to the fan question is „use five core“ (full-sized, insulated earth, so it counts as a full core).

The main question was whether that was just a plug (seems most likely now) or a small-ish power supply. If it happened to be the latter, fitting a mains plug to the cable would result in a fairly spectacular meltdown. Electronics designed for something like 5 or 12 V DC don't take kindly to...

All the pictures of that model I can find online seem to show various regular mains plugs (UK shaver, Euro, US).

The second report (the one for the CU swap) is an EIC according to the form, so that’s about the only thing that‘s right.

The FCU seems to be in a pattress box, so unless there‘s a back box behind it you might as well keep the FCU (fused switch in the cupboard). Removing the cable that feeds the FCU could be tricky in a flat.

The original report isn‘t any better. Why on earth would the condition of the tails be a limitation, unless they were somehow completely hidden? And what about the isolator? Either there is one or there isn‘t. Someone must have been shooting darts at the inspection form! The only SELV part of a...