image gallery

[teachergeezer]

I'm looking to set up a gallery at the college where I work of actual examples of outrageous wiring practice. Does anybody have any digital images of horrendous and blatant DIY work that I can post on to our system to highlight the dangers of 'getting it wrong'? There is some good stuff on American websites, but I want home-grown shoddiness!

Many thanks in advance.

 

[andy]

there are many bad DIY pics, including someone who wired all the cables into the MCBs at the bus bar end, and bypassed the MCB. they are there, but youd have to go thru various threads to find them

 

[slippyr4]

not sure if this meets your requirements- it's not so much as bad DIY as an example of how bad old wiring can be. Feel free to use the pictures, but I'd prefer you copied them rather than just linked to them- I have to pay bandwidth.[/url]

 

[Adam_151]

how about this: //www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=19325

think someone mentioned it further up the thread

 

[Spark123]

Just stole this from the blue room site, I am sure I've seen it on here before though:

 

[ban-all-sheds]

There is some good stuff on American websites

Indeed there is, and some of it quite ironic:

Not that they would realise that, of course...

 

[CAISTROP]

I don't have a picture for this, but when my neighbour moved in a couple of years ago, they had the electrics checked. The electrician found that the downstairs ring was terminated in two separate MCB's. I assume this is more bad practice than dangerous?

 

[slippyr4]

I don't have a picture for this, but when my neighbour moved in a couple of years ago, they had the electrics checked. The electrician found that the downstairs ring was terminated in two separate MCB's. I assume this is more bad practice than dangerous?

It's dangerous. The fault currents are twice what they ought to be, although if you do manage to trip one of the MCB's, the other will pop moments later.

Also, potential confusion when trying to isolate the circuit.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Dangerous.

Current flows both ways around a ring circuit, which is why you're able to use a 30/32A protective device on a cable rated at best at 27A.

If you put it into two MCBs, then only "half" the current will pass through each MCB so you could seriously overload the cable.

OK -it's not very dangerous in practice, because in practice people don't have heavy sustained loads on socket circuits these days, but the potential is there, and it does not comply with the regulations.

 

[teachergeezer]

This is a link (if it works, I've never done this bit before) to one of my 'current' favourites.
http://imagehost.darkernet.co.uk/i/1132935770_Image2.jpg
Check out the remains of the clamp meter at bottom right!

 

[1974stephen]

ouch - that's gonna hurt!

 

[ban-all-sheds]

That must have been one **** of a bang - do you know what happened?

Also - not images of DIY or NICEIC installation horrors, but some specatacular examples of big stuff going wrong: http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm