Well I eventually found it.
The house we've moved to has power in the greenhouse and a shed. I was told verbally that "there's a junction box somewhere near that tree". The garden was so overgrown that it was impossible to see anything - but yesterday SWMBO started by pulling out a bit of ivy and then got into "I've started so ..." mode until a section was clear. This revealed an SWA running off towards the shed above ground - so I started following it back the other way as that was the logical place to find a junction. Where it disappeared into the ground I started to dig ... carefully ... and about a foot down I found the cable going under a yellow plastic bag. Hmm, cable going under a plastic bag - sets alarm bells ringing
Eventually I found a JB (that's a water pipe to the greenhouse next to it) which contrary to my fears after seeing the plastic bad was actually a sealed one.
I'll add that given other "interesting electrics" in the property, I was keen to find this junction and see if it was OK.
Looking inside I found :
Hmm, not great, but I suppose it could be worse !
And pulling back the carrot on the third gland, I find a gland that is (at least nominally) sealed :
This gland was loose where it was screwed into the JB, and looking at them, it doesn't look like any of them are really properly sealed. For this one, there's a compression seal between the cable sheath and the gland body - but no seal between the two parts that clamp the SWA armour. Is that normal ?
Any thoughts on how the connections could be improved - given the limitation that this is teeing into an existing cable that is buried for some distance to etiher end and so it's not practical to "pull a little slack".
I'll need to do some measurements to work out protection. At the moment it's 1.5mm² SWA fed from a B32 MCB - with some T&E of unknown size between CU and the SWA (I haven't been inside the CU yet to see which cable is which). Like I said, there's a few things like this that need looking at as I work down the list
The house we've moved to has power in the greenhouse and a shed. I was told verbally that "there's a junction box somewhere near that tree". The garden was so overgrown that it was impossible to see anything - but yesterday SWMBO started by pulling out a bit of ivy and then got into "I've started so ..." mode until a section was clear. This revealed an SWA running off towards the shed above ground - so I started following it back the other way as that was the logical place to find a junction. Where it disappeared into the ground I started to dig ... carefully ... and about a foot down I found the cable going under a yellow plastic bag. Hmm, cable going under a plastic bag - sets alarm bells ringing
Eventually I found a JB (that's a water pipe to the greenhouse next to it) which contrary to my fears after seeing the plastic bad was actually a sealed one.I'll add that given other "interesting electrics" in the property, I was keen to find this junction and see if it was OK.
Looking inside I found :
Hmm, not great, but I suppose it could be worse !
And pulling back the carrot on the third gland, I find a gland that is (at least nominally) sealed :
This gland was loose where it was screwed into the JB, and looking at them, it doesn't look like any of them are really properly sealed. For this one, there's a compression seal between the cable sheath and the gland body - but no seal between the two parts that clamp the SWA armour. Is that normal ?
Any thoughts on how the connections could be improved - given the limitation that this is teeing into an existing cable that is buried for some distance to etiher end and so it's not practical to "pull a little slack".
I'll need to do some measurements to work out protection. At the moment it's 1.5mm² SWA fed from a B32 MCB - with some T&E of unknown size between CU and the SWA (I haven't been inside the CU yet to see which cable is which). Like I said, there's a few things like this that need looking at as I work down the list
