Replacing wall light switches for dimmers the other day and found 16mm deep back boxes whereas the dimmers I bought require 25mm... OK, a fiddly kind of job but just need to knock out a bit more breeze block.
Except when I took the first back box off, there was a very neat looking wooden plate fixed to the wall (inside the hole) fitted with an extraordinarily intricate wooden frame (intricate in that each corner was a housing joint). On the surface of the wooden back plate was two circular recesses, which had it have been traditional galv metal, would be knock outs. All this of course inside a hole in the wall to take a standard light switch.
As I snapped off each side of the 'frame', it became clear that my hole in the wall was now not only deep enough for a 25mm back box but had a nice bit of wood already attached to the back of the hole for wood screw fixings.
Now this type of thing is normally only happens as a result of some serious praying to the DIY gods, whilst offering some small limb injury as a sacrifice
So what I'd like to know is was this how all houses were prepared (it's about 50 years old I guess) or did the builder, all those years ago, foresee some hapless amateur electrician crying into his beer at the thought of chiseling out 9mm of breeze block within the confines of a light switch hole in the wall, 8 times
Jon.
Except when I took the first back box off, there was a very neat looking wooden plate fixed to the wall (inside the hole) fitted with an extraordinarily intricate wooden frame (intricate in that each corner was a housing joint). On the surface of the wooden back plate was two circular recesses, which had it have been traditional galv metal, would be knock outs. All this of course inside a hole in the wall to take a standard light switch.
As I snapped off each side of the 'frame', it became clear that my hole in the wall was now not only deep enough for a 25mm back box but had a nice bit of wood already attached to the back of the hole for wood screw fixings.
Now this type of thing is normally only happens as a result of some serious praying to the DIY gods, whilst offering some small limb injury as a sacrifice
So what I'd like to know is was this how all houses were prepared (it's about 50 years old I guess) or did the builder, all those years ago, foresee some hapless amateur electrician crying into his beer at the thought of chiseling out 9mm of breeze block within the confines of a light switch hole in the wall, 8 times
Jon.