A big thank you guys, for all the work you send my way!
It was an old installation with a four-way Wylex fuseboard and only a single ring main... and a very recent kitchen extension. When I tested continuity I got a broken ring. Worse still was that one leg powered a single socket with every other socket in the house on the other - one long, overloaded, under-protected radial. The same man 'did the wiring' in the kitchen as fitted the units and he'd cheerfully disconnected one set of connections at an existing socket, terminated them in a taped-up choc block (still live) and replaced this with his own cable, to which he added eight more sockets. Oh yes, he'd also removed the bonding to the water supply when he moved the sink. Loop impedance testing also revealed that only a few sockets in the house came close to meeting disconnection times.
Great for me because now I have a full rewire to do (long overdue anyway) but this is such a common occurrence. I doubt whether Part P will actually save very many lives or prevent many fires, but if it manages to curb this kind of bodge-up it will justify its existence.
It was an old installation with a four-way Wylex fuseboard and only a single ring main... and a very recent kitchen extension. When I tested continuity I got a broken ring. Worse still was that one leg powered a single socket with every other socket in the house on the other - one long, overloaded, under-protected radial. The same man 'did the wiring' in the kitchen as fitted the units and he'd cheerfully disconnected one set of connections at an existing socket, terminated them in a taped-up choc block (still live) and replaced this with his own cable, to which he added eight more sockets. Oh yes, he'd also removed the bonding to the water supply when he moved the sink. Loop impedance testing also revealed that only a few sockets in the house came close to meeting disconnection times.
Great for me because now I have a full rewire to do (long overdue anyway) but this is such a common occurrence. I doubt whether Part P will actually save very many lives or prevent many fires, but if it manages to curb this kind of bodge-up it will justify its existence.
