Ex electric heaters / bare wires

[skotl]

Hi all,

got a call from a friend who's just moved into a new flat; "They used to have some electric storage heaters, which they've replaced with gas C.H., but we still have some switches left. Can you remove them?"

I pitched up, drank some wine and had a good dinner, and then got onto the problem. every radiator had a double pole switch underneath, with the business end presenting itself as 1-2" of electric cable! My friend was sure that "these are dead" until I waved the magic current detector across them and showed that they were all still live.
The absolute cracker was the bathroom one whose switch was outside the bathroom, but the live conductor was about 5mm outside the shielding, at ankle level, right behind where you would be standing at the sink. Imagine being soaking wet, reaching for the tap, and stepping back so that your ankle touched the live conductor...

I made them all safe and, in the process, introduced my friend to a distributor unit that he didn't even realise he had (tripping the big OFF switch didn't kill the juice to these lines, cos the DU was in a seperate cupboard).
Where do I begin? What kind of contractor would just snip the cables below the radiator? Should he sue the previous owner?
This is the most dangerous botch job I've seen in a loooooooooong time.

Scott

 

[kevnurse]

I've just had gas CH installed to replace all of my electric storage heaters. The salesman asked me if I wanted to pay his company (a lot of money) to safely remove the electric heaters and isolate the switches. I guess the previous owner in his situation refused the offer and expense and simply turned off the DP switches and snipped the cables.

I completely removed the load cables from the switches and switched off the main isolator. Yes, the switches remain connected to the CU, but they present a future facility for extra sockets in all the rooms, once the cables have re-routed to the domestic supply.