Don't Go There

[robertito]

Some years ago a bought a flat with an underground garage directly below. It had underfloor electric heating and electrical devices such as automated curtains, and the garage had some large switches for a workbench. The electricity bills could be quite high but they were also very variable, some quarters I seemed to use very little. One day I turned off the main switch to do some minor work, but I noticed that an indicator light showed the immersion heater was still working.
After some hard thinking I figured out what the situation was and asked the Board to inspect the system. An electrics man and a detective turned up and checked out the meter, then suggested I was wasting their time as everything appeared OK. So I took them down to the garage, removed some panelling to reveal the situation. The incoming main ran across the corner of the garage and had been tapped and connected to the large switches, from where the connection was made to the flat meter. The effect was that the meter could be by-passed depending on the setting of the switches. It turned out that the insulation tape was a type used by the Electricity Board, and there were some serious consequences for an employee.
On my side it was repaired for free, but I did make a small donation to a charity.
I'm relating this simply as an interesting and unusual story, but of course it was a totally illegal and highly dangerous situation.

 

[xerxes]

What's interesting about this story is that the previous owner hadn't done anything to cover his tracks. Or did he have to move out in a hurry?

Illegal: certainly. But dangerous?

 

[dullSpark]

But dangerous?

One day I turned off the main switch to do some minor work, but I noticed that an indicator light showed the immersion heater was still working..

 

[daytona]

bet your glad the switch had a neon on it

 

[robertito]

Yes, the previous owner did leave in a hurry, he died.
I think the lesson from this story is that if you do strange or unusual DIY work, bear in mind that at some stage you may cause serious problems for other people.

 

[flyingsparks]

Yes, the previous owner did leave in a hurry, he died.

I know I shouldn't but that made me laugh!

 

[Lectrician]

Im sure I have told this story before...

Had a call from an estate agent once asking us to look at a vacent property they where selling. They said the consumer unit and everything had been turned off, but neighbours where saying there where lights on in the kitchen at night.

I went and looked at the old consumer unit was most definantly off. There was no lights on. I turned the consumer unit on, and played with the lights in the kitchen. Nothing odd.

I then noticed that the meter was kicking it around. I had nothing turned on! I went around flicking switched trying to locate the load. Found it on a spur in the kitchen - When I turned the spur off, the meter stopped kicking it around. Turn the spur back on, the meter whapped around.....and the street lights outside started to ping on! Hadn't noticed before.

Turned out the previous occupier had a lamp post in his hedge at the bottom of the back garden, and he had run a cable a very short distance from there to his adjacent shed, plugging it into a socket in there and back feeding the circuit.

The shed was spurred from the kitchen ring, as was the under cabinet lighting! When the strret lights came on at night, so did the kitchen lights!

 

[robertito]

Good story, Lectrician, it's extraordinary what some folks get up to....

 

[Chris.J]

Many years ago, a friend of mine had his gas meter on a post in the garden. In the winter it got condensation inside, which built up to the point that when it froze
the hands could'nt turn!!!

 

[xerxes]

But dangerous?

One day I turned off the main switch to do some minor work, but I noticed that an indicator light showed the immersion heater was still working..

I take your point, and stand corrected.

Maybe if the installation had been properly labelled ...

 

[plugwash]

Illegal: certainly. But dangerous?

Well there are a couple of safety issues.

the first is the same that you get with legitimate multiple supplies, you can think you have turned everything off when you haven't. This is made even worse if things are fed from multiple sources or some of the supplies are timed (e.g. streetlight supplies). This is made worse by the fact that someone installing a leccy stealing setup probablly isn't going to want to draw attention to the fact and unlike legit multiple supplies there won't be any paperwork for the eixsting supply.

The second problem is that a lot of people installing theese leccy stealing setups won't have the electrical design experiance to make sure there is adequate overcurrent/ short circuit protection in place for all current paths.