Urban myths

[ebee]

Where can I buy a Part P certificate and how much are they?

I know it`s a silly one but if we put toghether all the daft ones we could have a reet larf for xmas

 

[EdwardCurrent]

Went to look at a job a few months ago now, the young mother proudly showed me her brand new shower unit.
I asked her which wall it was going to put on and she said that she didn't mind, I then asked if she had contacted a plumber. She looked at me 'all confused like' and told me she had got the shower because it was 'electric' and that she didn't think she would need any plumbing done !
Hmmmmmmm

Ed
(she was tasty though, if that makes a difference)

 

[ricicle]

I once attended a botched kitchen job.When I told the lady of my concerns she said to me " the guy who did the wiring was a proper electrician - he came in a van!"

 

[Space cat]

I overheard this conversation on CB many, many years ago:

"I tidied up the wires behind my TV and now I've got no picture."

"Does the sound still work?"

"Yes."

"It'll be the aerial cable. The middle wire is broken."

"How do you know?"

"Because the picture comes down the middle wire and the sound comes down the outside."

 

[JohnD]

I was talking to a woman in a bar and hapened to mention that my great-grandfather was killed at Waterloo.

"That's terrible!" she said "Which platform?"

I was telling this to another woman later, and she laughed her head off.

"Hahahahaha!" she said "What a stupid woman! As if it mattered which platform!"

 

[ban-all-sheds]

This appears to be a common urban myth right now:

"I had an electrician doing a rewire/bathroom work/kitchen work/new CU, and he'd just about finished but then he fell ill/retired/moved away/got abducted by aliens and is refusing to come back and issue a certificate. How do I get another electrician to take over and do the certificate?"

 

[rjb]

My sister used to live in a small village in the New Forest. I got lost and ask an old boy "Can you tell me the way to Sway".

He laughed at me while rocking from left and right and then walked off.

 

[jossper]

An elderly relative once told me off for unplugging something without turning off the switch on the switchsocket. "The electric will leak out into the room" she told me. I tried to explain that it doesn't work like that but she wouldn't have it. "It wastes the electricity - and I have to pay for it". She seemed to think it was some kind of gas! In the end I showed her how the shutters in the socket worked - I told her they were little "doors" to stop this happening.

Paul

 

[daytona]

little doors.

thats quality mate

 

[viewer]

Many years ago (don't ask - but about 1965) I overheard a conversation between a lady with a Hoover automatic washing machine and the service engineer. Apparently the machine was not doing a good job of cleaning the clothes. The lady explained that she had economy 7 electricity so she switched on the machine to run when she went to bed."That's the problem", explained the man from Hoover,"that cheap electricity is just not good enough. That's why your clothing never gets clean, it's not the machine, it's the poor quality night time electricity".

 

[efiste2]

I once had a cable jointer ask me where the nuetral core connects, on THE HIGH VOLTAGE cable box of a 11kv transformer (for those not in the know HIGH VOLTAGE is distributed in a 3 phase 3 core cable and there is no nuetral except at the step down transformer)...............and an electrical engineer asked, if we looped the single phase supply across the three HV termiantions of a three phase overhead transformer, will it be the same as providing a 3 phase supply

 

[bernardgreen]

In 1959 a sweet old lady wanted to have one of these new fangled telephones as her son had one and she could then talk to him more often. But there was a long waiting list for new connections with the GPO.

She bought a telephone from an ex army shop and knowing they worked on electricity fitted a three pin plug to the lead ( red, blue and green ) and plugged it in.

With 230 volt across the bell ( red green ) it rang very loudly which surprised the old lady a bit as she hadn't told anyone the number on the dial of the phone.

Unfortunately when she picked the phone up to answer it the voice circuit couldn't take the 230 volts and catastrophic failure occured. She was badly shaken but not injured and went straight to the phone box on the corner and made a strong complaint to the operator.

The new GPO phone was installed with a couple of days......

 

[jossper]

Years ago, when BT was Post Office Telephones, phones were hard wired, not plug in. If you wanted another phone in your house you had to get the Post Office in to do it, and they would charge you for installation & rental for the extra phone. One of my colleagues "illegally" installed her own extension in her bedroom at her flat. There was an Urban Myth circulating at the time that the Post Office could tell how many phones you had from their tests, and her flatmate was concerned they would be caught for this heinous crime ("misusing the Postmaster General's electricity"!)
So I rang up the flatmate:
Me "I'm a PO engineer and I need to do some tests on your line, can you help me?"
Her "Yesss...." (sounding a bit worried)
Me "Can you whistle down the phone for me"
Her "OK" (and whistles)
Me "That looks OK - can you hold the receiver at arms length and whistle again"
She does this.
Me "I can see from my tester that you have another phone there ,can you go and do the same on that one for me?"
Her "errrm (panicking now) have we got another phone?"
Me "Yes - it looks like it's in the bedroom"
She finally admits to having the second phone and we go through the whole whistling down the phone charade again.
As soon as I get off the phone with her she calls my colleague and tells her the Post Office know about her illegal extension and they're going to get into trouble!

Did you know the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary?"

 

[Space cat]

There was an Urban Myth circulating at the time that the Post Office could tell how many phones you had

I'm not so sure that it was a myth. It would have been possible, at least in theory, to measure the ringing current and so deduce the number of bells. You could defeat this easily enough by disconnecting the bells in the extra phones. With their handsets on the hook they would then present an open circuit to the line.

 

[jossper]

True, it could be detected in theory. But the testers they used at that time were mostly concerned with DC line conditions and AFAIK couldn't easily measure ringing current. To accurately tell how many bells were connected from the exchange end you would have to know the loop resistance of the line as well. I think people only got caught when a fitter came out to fix a fault & found extra phones wired in bellwire or mains flex. If he found it wired correctly he'd probably assume their records were wrong - they often were.