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Sad to hear, he had a huge amount of knowledge and experience in his field of expertise :( RIP

Done this before- What I found that worked is that you have to get a small sharp knife and very carefully scrape off the lacquer coating off each individual strand for about 5mm or however long you want the solder to be. You should then be able to get the solder to stick :)

I work for the local DNO and routinely change these live, you don't just beat it and smash it to bits, it has to be done carefully with great care taken not to 'ring the bell.' Once you've split the two halfs of the cast iron chamber and prised them off, it's just a case of blowing the bitumen...

That cutout is well past it's sell by date and really needs sorting, it's not accessible and the tails are PBJ- polybutyl jute covered. Basically rubber insulated but will probably be in half decent condition- still need replacing. When it was installed it was probably all ok, but has been...

When you get the plug changed for a standard 13a one, you will need to take some precautions before you introduce it to the mains. It probably hasn't seen power for decades and something inside may go off pop if you just plug it in. You ideally need to power it up via a series lamp limiter just...

They having a f***ing laugh!?

If the supply is fed overhead via a pole and it is a concentric cable, water may be getting in at the pole termination end and creeping along the cable and the only way out is at the other end in your house :)

Love the old style line taps (designed for old open wire overhead connections) binding the earths together! You can tell it was installed by linesmen. All serious though it's well past it's time and will contain asbestos.

The majority of the pilc cabling is still in as good condition today as the day it was installed. It's better than the plastic stuff that's put in today. It might look scabby but in most cases it's perfectly good unless the lead sheath has damaged in some way or has been overloaded. Proper cable

So if I decided to go and pull the fuses out at the local substation just to stuff you lot up, how would you do your calculations based on 0 volts? :lol:

The best thing you can do is give the dno a call and arrange a cable trace to be done and the route marked out. It hopefully will be free. Cable plans probably won't help as services are very rarely drawn in these days and most of the time not drawn on the plan anyway- only the main cables...

off the point slightly but what plank installed that pipe clip directly onto the armours to use as earth?

The primary side of that tranny has only got one terminal so it wouldnt be much use

And without people like me no electrician would be of any use because there would be no electricity supply to utilise!

Ah that'll be alright!

These gas companies have a habit of fitting meters and then breaking our cutouts by murdering off terminal screws, breaking off sealing tabs, even cracking the whole fuse carrier in some cases. They also have a habit of condemning the cutout to a cutout change due to the presence of a access...

I hae a feeling this may be left over from the days of dc mains, +200v 0v -200v (guessing the actual voltages.). Now it is probably a split phase supply with a different phase on each fuse. They are probs only rated to 30a and the whole thing looks lined with our friend asbestos :)

Once we err 'proved' a phase to phase fault. A rather large flame shot out the hole higher than the van. Good job no one was around!

The 'exposed copper' looks like the red PVC insulation on the live core of the concentric cable. It all looks a mess and could do with sorting out. Also if the cable is a looped feed for best door it should be fed on the live unfused side of the cutout as if the fuse blows and there is no access...

Maybe it was caused by the hv network feeding the t/x being abnormally fed? Networks in parallel etc? These sort of things have caused me and my colleagues a fair amount of head scratching before we Sussed it out.