Underground cables.

[kai]

These cables blew up under the pavement, on investigation it turned out that moisture seeped into the ancient paper/lead covering and led to a short circuit - the bang was enormous - and a big hole was ripped in the pavement - luckily no one was standing on top of the spot at that time!

 

[breezer]

another picture we cant see
may i suggest you use diynot to host pictures? (you can do it via your profile)

you can always use the preview button to see what your post looks like before you click the submit button

i dont know what the picture looks like, but i have seen as you describe happen, for the same reason.

 

[Lectrician]

Quite often pics will be able to be seen by the poster in their post due to temporary internet files .

If the OP has a clearout, he too will see what we see

 

[kai]

Please note the firewall settings should allow images on this site, and
http://images*.fotopic.net/ for photos to display OK.

 

[Steve]

Its got nothing to do with anyone's firewall.

When you're logged into that site, you can see your photos. We aint logged in! You need to make the photo album public or open so everyone can see it.

 

[Steve]

 

[Steve]

You typed / copied the wrong URL.

 

[Click-Sure]

Juicy.

Just goes to show how anchient most of the electrical infrastructure beneath our feet is.

I get the feeling this sort of thing is going to become more and more common as underground cables get older.

OP: got a picture of the scene on the street before the 'hole diggers' got there?

 

[plugwash]

also any idea what voltage theese cables were. I would be very surprised if LV cabling could blow a hole in the pavement above.

 

[consumer done over]

I wonder about the state of the cable to supply older houses like mine.
I could have a nice new shiny CU with 16mm earth and RCDs everywhere and even a newly fitted cut only to find out at my expense one day how bad underground cabling is......
I think REC should do more to sort these problems out. All well and good bringing strict regs for consumers and indeed spark with Part P but what are the DNOs doing about their ancient installs? I've come across posts on here where some people are waiting six weeks in oder for the dno to attend dangerous installations.
A step foward would be to put someone technically clued up in the call centre office to deal with issues related to metering and cutouts, not some lazy bimbo who knows FA about electrics.

Rant over

 

[efiste2]

From the pics thats definately LV...........Lv faults can sometimes be more serious than HV faults. Depending on the local network. Usually LV mains are only protected by 315A HRC fuses, and usually fed from both ends by a 500KVA 11kv transformer........so to put it technically, there is plenty of potential juice to flow into a fault Where as HV can sometimes have good unit protection called SOLKOR that can trip a circuit out quite fast, As for the Age of the local network, I can only speak for my local area (MANWEB) but, it has some very old switchgear and PILC cables out there, but to be fair they do have a switchgear replacement program running,