Minor electric shock with the power off... faulty circuit breaker?

[JohnW2]

But I wasn't talking about the OP reading the cert now, but about him having been told what had actually happened when the work was done and remembering that. ... After all he did 'remember' that the only change had been to put the new shower on the new CU.

Does not your "After all ..." point indicate how inaccurately (if at all) the OP may have 'remembered' what was written on the cert or told to him (at the time) about what had been done?

Kind Regards, John

 

[SUNRAY]

Does not your "After all ..." point indicate how inaccurately (if at all) the OP may have 'remembered' what was written on the cert or told to him (at the time) about what had been done?

Kind Regards, John

I'm going to enter the element of doubt here, many a time I've been on site and been told by a contractor; Sparks, Chippy, Wet boy, whatever something has been done in a particular way or to the drawings etc and when I get into the job they have told a load of tosh. The power feed provided is often on a different dist board. Or been pinched by another contractor so the one left is incorrect etc.
A friend had a new kitchen installed and part of it was an additional CU with RCD as main switch exclusively for the kitchen, they even told my friend which each breaker was for but not a label or bit of paper in sight. One of the new appliances tripped the RCD so they swapped it with the intruder alarm and the dining room light ended up on the new board due to the way they'd intercepted the kitchen light wiring.

For one I had built panels in the workshop and gone to site to do modifications. These were mounted in risers beside a 3ph dist board and I'd been told each panel was on breaker number 7... was it F*** I had to trace every single one through the conduit and trunking, admittedly not a huge job but having to do it 20 or so times was a bit of a P*** off. The boards were labelled and everything but the size of the breakers were totally random.

I find OP's comments completely possible.

As to single point of isolation, popping a 100A isolator in place of those Henleys would do nicely.

 

[crystal ball]

How would you get two sets of tails in the outgoing side, surely leave the blocks and put the isolator before them

 

[SUNRAY]

How would you get two sets of tails in the outgoing side, surely leave the blocks and put the isolator before them

Get the isolator with a double clamp. Or use a couple of busbar connectors.

 

[StephenOak]

Does not your "After all ..." point indicate how inaccurately (if at all) the OP may have 'remembered' what was written on the cert or told to him (at the time) about what had been done?

Well we know that not cert. was issued:

I hired him to install the shower wiring, and that's all I thought he did.

I honestly didn't know he'd done anything else, he definitely never said he'd re-routed some of the lights, and no paperwork/certification ever changed hands (again, I wasn't aware that I should have received some).

which is why I said "if a certificate had been issued". And I only put remembered in quotes as his memory was wrong, not because he forgot anything but because he was given duff information.

Looking back I see that I was, in essence agreeing with

None of this would have arisen if your shower installer had issued full certification

I don't think there was anything contentious about what I wrote initially. If the installer had made it clear that he had moved lights as well as installed the shower, then the OP might (only might) have remembered and been more careful.

Should the OP have tested for dead - yes of course. However having turned off the main switch on the CU would many, many non-electricians have taken it for granted that all power was off - again yes of course.

 

[MagMrMax]

Hello All,

Just to clarify again: I never got any paperwork, and the installer never said he'd moved any lights. He didn't even label the new CU.

Thanks to everyone for their help and insight. It is a real lesson learned for me in many ways, and I will be much more careful in the future.

 

[Adam_151]

How would you get two sets of tails in the outgoing side, surely leave the blocks and put the isolator before them

One of my solutions to this, if limited space, is a wylex REC4 4 pole isolator and a bit of the busbar type with the U-shaped slots (wylex call it balcony style) to link 2 pairs of terminals on the incomming side but leaving the cage clamps completely free for the tails to enter. Blanking plugs are supplied for the unused entries, and I print a label that is spaced such "L L N N" to ID the terminals and also label it as 230V just for good measure

 

[phatboy]

The moving of a few lights may seem 'random', but could be a good reason.

In the 'old days' there was a rule about no more than 10 luminaries on a domestic lighting radial (Not circuit), something like 10x100w = 4.2A which was deemed loaded enough.

The original house electrician could have got to 10 fittings, and then just ran a new radial back to the breaker / fuse for the rest. When your shower electrician arrived, he decided it best to have the bathroom lights on RCD board, and removed 1 of the cables from the old board, after checking it served the bathroom (Any by chance others), and job done.

My parents house has this arrangement, as when they had a new CU fitted the electrician fitted an RCBO to each of the cables, as a consequence the house has 1 lighting circuit for every room, except the box room which has its own! For 7 years I've been meaning to sort it so the upstairs has a circuit, and downstairs the other......

 

[JohnW2]

In the 'old days' there was a rule about no more than 10 luminaries on a domestic lighting radial (Not circuit), something like 10x100w = 4.2A which was deemed loaded enough.

The (current version of the) OSG is still apparently in those 'old days', since it still says that the load on lighting circuit should b calculated on the basis of "100W per lampholder", which would limit a 6A circuit to about 13 'lampholders'.

Kind Regards, John