Dodgy trade pictures for your amusement! - 1 Million Views!

mainline said:

Also using through hole wiring plugs makes life easier

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Is that where you trim the cores to length after the plug is fitted?

brianmoooore said:

Is that where you trim the cores to length after the plug is fitted?

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Yes. Much easier.

brianmoooore said:

... I'd crimped one of the plugs on upside down. Could make out which is was through the translucent plastic of the plug, so five minutes later and one scrap plug, all was good.

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You've reminded me of an "incident" from a good few years ago. My employer at the time managed a campus WAN for a science park - each office/unit was pre-wired with a couple of network points, and one was cabled back to a switch port. We could remotely provision internet access just by configuring the port and allocating them an IP address or range.
Unfortunately, wherever you put these sockets, it's going to be in the wrong place for someone - and sure enough, a business moved in but needed the internet connection to their server room the other side of the unit. So one 40m cable and a few lifted floor tiles later, internet provided where it was needed. Only it "didn't work".
We ended up on a 4 way call - me, the people who at the time managed the network for us, the customer's IT guy, and their external IT support. It turned out, the guy "knew" he needed a crossover cable so cut the plug off and fitted a new one wired as a crossover. - neither our switch, nor his firewall had auto MDI (most devices will automatically switch modes as needed these days so crossover cables are rarely needed, this was some time ago).
The customer's IT guy talked him through finding another crossover cable and an inline coupler. The customer said he'd found one and "it's yellow, is that OK ?" His IT guy responded as I'd have loved to ... "I don't f***in care what colour it is as long as it's crossover".
Needless to say, with the extra crossover in line, our "it's not working" service sprang into life. I managed to refrain from "I told you so" (or something to that effect).

Big short-circuit current there ?

Mikegh said:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1511654834893643786

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Strange that it didn't seem to trip either.

I was thinking there was 2 bangs looks like only 1

Those cutters seemed bit dull, a tough cut and good weld.......leaving them dangling.

As I've mentioned previously we do a bit of work for insurance companies that put right council/housing association properties after fires/floods etc. (this one was a fire caused by a weed grow). What we usually find in a lot of council properties in our area is the kitchen (if its still there) has been upgraded recently with a new ring and cooker circuit and RCBO's installed in place of the non protected circuits but usually the original consumer unit remains, usually very badly done. this was todays example doing an EICR.



Only a little thing but it took me about two hours to rectify, all because they tried to cram a cooker switch into a 25mm box, couldn't get it back so trimmed the cables down as short as possible. Stuff like this wouldn't normally bother me but we get major grief of the council bods for the slightest thing we do wrong (it might be we put 0.4s in the disconnection box on the cert instead of 5s or fit a 230V 9V backup heat alarm instead of a lithium one) yet the actual dangerous stuff they are totally oblivious to and I come across it time after time.

Was reading a thread about repairing imperial MICC and remembered this abomination near me where someone has replaced a Coughtrie light with something of a different size:

pc1966 said:

Was reading a thread about repairing imperial MICC and remembered this abomination near me where someone has replaced a Coughtrie light with something of a different size:
View attachment 111124

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They had to feel good standing back and looking at that upon completion.

DPG said:

Yes. Much easier.

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Need to be careful with these. I chased down an issue at work recently where these had been used but a few hadn't been cut perfectly flush. Results in them not sitting square and breaks contact.

Also in damp environments they can occasionally get a bit fusty at the bare ends and again make poor contact.

In defence of the LV folk, i started in this trade - and there is an art to it - just like with mains. A caring LV installer will confirm that with enough practice and the right technique its possible to make a sound and easy crimp, first time with traditional RJ45s.

lozarus said:

... there is an art to it - just like with mains. A caring LV installer will confirm that with enough practice and the right technique its possible to make a sound and easy crimp, first time with traditional RJ45s.

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Indeed. By the time you've done a few hundred, or thousand, it gets easy. At a previous job, we used to get work experience kids from school - I'd show them how it's done, let them do their own (with assistance), and then they could take home their very own patch cable that they'd made. It went down well.
Plus it was easier than explaining all the other stuff I did - without giving away too many secrets.

pc1966 said:

Was reading a thread about repairing imperial MICC and remembered this abomination near me where someone has replaced a Coughtrie light with something of a different size:
View attachment 111124

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Really?

Still live, discovered by a friend who will be rebuilding the shower area: