Christmas Light sabotage attempt (failed)

[bernardgreen]

It was the big Switch On of the Christmas Lights on Friday at 6 PM. The lights had been installed a week before and tested all OK.

At 4:30 PM Friday the remote system switching system was installed and tested.

One power feed was found to be dead, This one is fed from an RCD in a street lamp post.

The RCD in the lamp post was showing a few MegΩ between IN and OUT on both Live and Neutral when in the ON position. Obviously both switch contacts inside the RCD had failed.

An emergency repair to replace the RCD had power restored by 5:45 PM.

This morning the failed RCD is showing complete open circuit ( more than 500 MegΩ )

This was sabotage..... by ants who had invaded the RCD

Some had been crushed between the switch contacts.

 

[terryplumb]

Obviously part of the ANTi Xmas brigade.

 

[bernardgreen]

Obviously part of the ANTi Xmas brigade

Formi dable

 

[Mottie]

I had a wall socket explode once in a place I was working when I switched a kettle on. I unscrewed the front plate to find a wedge of fried ants inside.

 

[securespark]

I was called out to a ring final blowing a 30A 3036 fuse.

Belled out the circuit and traced it to a socket that their Tom had been peeing on regularly. It was full of crystallised urine.

Christ knows how he didn't get a shock up the pi55er.....

 

[bernardgreen]

Christ knows how he didn't get a shock up the pi55er.....

Poor paw contact to ground..

 

[securespark]

Lucky cat!

 

[chivers67]

I was called out to a BT Comms cabinet fault a number of months ago with the RCD tripping. somehow some slugs had managed to squeeze their way through some trunking into the DB.

 

[SUNRAY]

I've found earwigs and ladybirds love to congregate in electrical fittings. Especially outdoor fittings with drip holes.

 

[333rocky333]

A Rat about a foot long inside a 4x4 trunking

 

[SUNRAY]

Mouse nest on top of the capacitors inside a VFD where the only access was the vent holes which I couldn't get a small finger tip in.

Snake skin in trunking.

 

[conny]

A mummified moth the size of a dinner plate inside a High Voltage turbine motor shipped over for repair from Sarawak in Borneo.

 

[SUNRAY]

I heard about poisonous spiders as big as a hand, in a wharehouse in the trunking which had come in with bananas.

 

[securespark]

A mummified moth the size of a dinner plate inside a High Voltage turbine motor shipped over for repair from Sarawak in Borneo.

Been out there a couple of times 1981/ 1982. My Dad was teaching in Kuching. The insect life was incredible! What I remember so well was staying in Bako National Park, where you had little pots of liquid in which the feet of the food storage cupboard stood, so ants would not invade your supplies.

I remember eating a rice dish one night in the dark and not knowing if the things I was scooping up on my fork were grains of black (purple when cooked) rice or ants!

And the Cicadas were amazing! Bright green bodies with red eyes and what a racket!

Monitor lizards were sweet though, and the monkeys.

Had to be careful swimming or you ended up with leeches stuck on your dooh-dah!

Swimming in Bau Lake was stunningly beautiful, but eerie. The locals said it was cursed after a bus crashed into it (in, I think, '79) and school kids drowned. It was said to give you a lifetime's curse if you ignored advice and swam in it anyway.