Damaged street lighting cable.

[kai]

Recently a whole street in Islington was off supply, On investigation it was found that a 4mm sq street lighting cable was damaged, and because it was directly fed off a 300 sq.mm. street main fused at 500 amps, with no protection whatsoever, it simply burnt itself back to the street main, flashed over at the joint, and took out the whole street's supply. The strong burning smells in the area over the past few days would have been a clue. The flashover also damaged the pavement surface - it was mastic asphalt paving.

Do you think Part P or similar should be extended to DNO works, where cowboy work such as this gets done?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

And you know that it was cowboy DNO work how, exactly?

 

[kai]

The engineers investigating the fault on the day told me that (a 4mm sq street lighting cable was damaged, and because it was directly fed off a 300 sq.mm. street main fused at 500 amps, with no fuse protection at the branch off.)

 

[JohnD]

The connection to my house is the same, though it is in 10mm concentric, which is better unless someone puts a digger through it.

How about your house?

 

[JohnW2]

The engineers investigating the fault on the day told me that (a 4mm sq street lighting cable was damaged, and because it was directly fed off a 300 sq.mm. street main fused at 500 amps, with no fuse protection at the branch off.)

You talk of "cowboy DNO work", but are you not simply describing standard DNO practice (for all sorts of things, not just street lighting cables)?

Kind Regards, John

 

[RF Lighting]

Which property or persons did the fault damage?

 

[securespark]

The cable itself and the pavement by the looks of things.

 

[RF Lighting]

That would be none then

 

[Lectrician]

AFAIK, the minimum cable size is 10mm though.

 

[chris765]

DNO's used 4mm all the time for streetlighting. Most are moving onto 25mm concentric however at least 1 IDNO I know of still allows 4mm streetlight connections.
Still with 400A fuses a 25mm concentric will still blow clear (I've seen it) and may even blow a main clear.