electric cable in soil pipe!

[calumr135]

Hi all just so you know its all sorted now, the attic light supply is now looped from the bedroom ceiling rose, very straight forward job and only required lifting a couple floorboards which were not even screwed down, its a much neater job now and lot safer.

What has been your worst discoveries? I mean I have seen a lot of bodges but this was a whole new level of bodge and downright dangerous. Whoever it was should definitely be fined a very least and that is being generous but sadly I doubt they will ever be found.

 

[jg321]

What has been your worst discoveries?

I'm no spark - just a DIYer who's just bough his own house, but here's what I discovered in my loft when I moved in:

https://s1.postimg.org/4idm5148f/20161222_125605.jpg
https://s1.postimg.org/lk6g74j3j/20161222_125625.jpg

It's the wiring for the bathroom lights. They'd basically stripped bits of T&E back many metres, then run the individual cores as singles where needed.

Also, this is the wiring for the dining room light:

https://s1.postimg.org/q7ci8w6gf/20170105_175833.jpg

You'll notice the lack of earth - despite the fact it's fed from the other side of the wall, which does have an earth:

https://s1.postimg.org/8ipcv0k33/20170105_175813.jpg

And yes, the faceplate was metal.

I didn't take a picture but in the spare bedroom, they'd sunk a plastic surface mounted box, and put a metal lightswitch on. You can probably guess where the earth was connected to - the plastic backbox.

The rest of the wiring looks OK actually (apart from one scary bit behind a bathroom tile that I've yet to see, but have disconnected!) - and I've seen most of it as I've had the floorboards up fitting additional sockets, network and aerial cables etc.

So, yours is tame compared to mine - and I'm certain that both of ours are tame compared to what a lot of the folks here have seen!

Cheers,

Jon

 

[SUNRAY]

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of this incident as there were too many people in the way, so I've tried to represent the installation of a brand new chiller unit on the roof of a hospital.

The grey square represents a steel control panel, maybe 1200mm square which contains all the control gear: 600A main isolator, MCB's, contactors, relays, BMS controller etc. Normally the gland plate in the bottom of the box would be removed and another steel box OF typically 400 or 600mm square attached to cater for the incoming supply cable, hence the connexions appearing to be fairly close to the side of the box.
In this case the electricians had no experience of this technique and glanded the twin 240mm 4core SWA's into the bottom of the box and made the connexions using lengths of M12 studding as shown [only 2 shown for clarity].
By the time a thread is cut on a 12mm rod there is about 9mm left, or about 70mm² and after 2 hours of commissioning one of the studs melted, allowing the cables to spring forwards, puncturing the paint of the metal door and burning a 100mm hole through the door.
Fortunately the control circuit was on the lost phase so the chiller shut down straightaway.
The supply was still live!

I don't it's my worst find,
I'm sure a cable run inside a water pipe beats it:

 

[plugwash]

Indeed. It's very odd since I imagine that it was probably more difficult for them to do what they did that it would have been to get a supply from a ceiling rose.

Kind Regards, John

Having your loft light on your upstairs lighting circuit isn't exactly conviniant when you need to do work on your upstairs lighting circuit.

 

[JohnW2]

Having your loft light on your upstairs lighting circuit isn't exactly conviniant when you need to do work on your upstairs lighting circuit.

That is true, but how often does one need to do work on an upstairs lighting circuit? For the very rare occasions on which that is necessary, I have LED battery work lamps, not to mention extension leads!

I presume that you are not advocating the approach that was taken in the OP's house as a method of avoiding use of the upstairs lighting circuit?

Kind Regards, John