Bad Practices Number One

All of these photos are of things I found when I was replacing & rewiring the kitchen at Home

No. 1

This cable was feeding the old dishwasher in the old kitchen at home (It was done by the old owners of the house)

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It is a piece of 1 or 1.5mm T+E, which had the plug connected to it, which was then connected to a piece of flex, then to the dishwasher flex, the connections were made by a terminal block wrapped in insulation tape. This connection was in the cupboard under the sink.


No.2

This connection was found plastered into the wall, when I was rewiring the kitchen. It was feeding the bathroom light. The connection was a terminal block wrapped up with selotape.

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No. 3

This connection was above the ceiling of the kitchen & was feeding the two kitchen lights & the bathroom light. The 1st kitchen light had no earth wire going to it (the kitchen lights were metal lights), & the earths on the connection above the ceiling were twisted together, & covered with a piece of green/yellow sleeving

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No. 4

Kitchen ring cables too short, so extended with terminal blocks & two pieces of T+E. The thing was that the consumer unit was only about 1m away from the first socket on the ring circuit.

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The consumer unit was in the cupboard by the door

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No. 5

This JB was a disused one, left behied disconnected after a previsons rewire of the kitchen lighting circuit. The cables were VIR, & were: a feed to the JB, a SR, a feed off to another jb, & the feed to the kitchen light.

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This I hope to be the first in a series of bad practices, not necessarily dangerous, but frowned upon by a "proper" spark.

I see this one a lot. Why effectively reduce the CSA of the cable by not connecting all the strands, I do not know. Why not crimp on a lug: surely that takes less time than faffing around like they have done here?

If anyone has pictures of similar bad practices, feel free to post them here, then maybe when a library is built up, it could go into the wiki.

Bad Practices - Number One: Incorrct termination of conductor.

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I agree that using a crimp is much better but if (for whatever reason) someone decides not to use one that's the way I too was taught to terminate stranded cable.

As said before it allows the cables to sit better and by wiping the 7th strand around the the base it also stops the other cores from splaying out the insulation when you tighten the screw.

As for reducing the CSA, depending on the type of termination every connection reduces it to varying degrees so as long as the wiping is kept as close to the termination as possible I can't see a problem. :?
 
Surely that practice reduces the CSA by one seventh.

I can't say I've ever had a problem with the 4 to 3 strands split.
 
I see this one a lot. Why effectively reduce the CSA of the cable by not connecting all the strands, I do not know. Why not crimp on a lug: surely that takes less time than faffing around like they have done here?

If anyone has pictures of similar bad practices, feel free to post them here, then maybe when a library is built up, it could go into the wiki.

Bad Practices - Number One: Incorrct termination of conductor.

BadPracticeNumberOne.jpg

I would say that using a ring crimp would make a better connection.

Also on a side note, the brazing on that pipe looks poor. Is it a gas pipe :?:
 

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