What's the stupidest thing you've seen?

[RF Lighting]

A mate of mine who played in a band got shock off a mains plug when setting up on stage ..... It was a cable with a mains plug on both ends!

That cable is known as a widow maker. The are so stupidly dangerous it is untrue, and there really is no excuse for ever making one.

When we moved into our current home ... I found one of the sockets in the kitchen was on the end of a very significant T&E cable traight back to the fuse box. The previous owners had decided to move the cooker .... and had simpley swapped the cooker outlet with a double socket ... sorted!

Nothing wrong with that at all. Quite common infact.

 

[NewOrder]

Indeed thats all my uncle did, we had an unused CCU so my uncle replaced it with a double socket and changed the fuse to a lower one, the central heating people then had a go at took a spur of it for the timer which is connected via a FCU.

I can't see any problem as it has a low rated fuse at the CU, the heater timer is on a 3 amp FCU (fuse has not blown once since 1984).

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Playing devils advocate what is the worst that is likely to happen here? it's on a concrete garage floor so it seems unlikely to set anything on fire even if it does get damaged and being a short run the chance of damage is fairly low. And afaict plug fuses have a breaking capacity of 6KA which is as high as most domestic MCBs so the appliance should be adequately protected.

I think you misunderstand?

It was the flex hardwired into the supply that ran across the concrete floor, before it got to the trailing socket and the freezer plug.

I think that the worst that could happen to a scuffed 1.5mm² cable on a 60A (or more) fuse is quite bad....

 

[333rocky333]

I got called out to a pub to check the supply to the glasswasher, followed
the cable back and it was pushed direct into the bottom of the electric
meter.
Only thing was they used the load side.


Another pub someone had drilled a hole in the back of the meter and a hole in one of the sub-main switches, about a foot higher , they had chased out the cement in between the bricks, zig zagged some cables between the two points and repointed it in.

 

[conny]

Working late one night to rewind a stator when the coil winding machine blew a fuse. The guy winding the coils was a skilled armature winder and decided to replace it. I looked up just in time to see but too late to shout that you cannot replace a 20A fuse with a 4" bent nail! He was thrown across the metal bench he was standing on and spent the night in hospital.
I was a 18 year old apprentice and was asked to explain why a skilled man decided to do what he did!

HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW????

Funny looking back but I could have had a dead body in front of me that night.

(BTW, the fuse blew because one phase had dead shorted to earth around the winding head as he wound the coils).

 

[viewer]

Found a widow maker joining two air pollution monitors set up by the council health and safety team.