Hi Everyone,
I would really appreciate some advice on the following problem I have had with a temporary electric supply.
We are in the process of building a couple of flats and had a temporary supply put in, no problem! However much later when one of the labourers was putting the hockey sticks into the new boxes and needed to bust through some of the footing he stupidly damaged the cable with a breaker and grazed the cable exposing the outer sheath (cable was not severed) and there was a load bang and the cable started fizzing in the hole which was filled happened to be filled with water!
We called the supplier out to repair and two guys turned up to repair the cable and one of them got a zap of the cable as he tried to repair it. Before this the same labourer got a zap off the site cabin handle after he went through the cable.
We then had the two neighbours that lived down the lane come out and say there TVs had blown up!
The engineer said that there was no way that us going through the cable would have caused the TVs to blow and it was just a coincidence! I just don't believe that as it happened at exactly the same time!
He then called his boss and about 5 vans pulled up within about 20mins and started to take down the over head cables to the main road. They replaced a stretch of the cable and were working on one of the poles.
I don't remember exactly what our sparky said but he thinks that the supply cable had an existing fault and that the sheathing was somehow live and that's what caused the cabin to become live when it was damaged and the cable was possibly 'vibrating' and caused a surge down the line to blow up the TV's. This he says may be why the engineer got a shock as he didn't expect the sheathing to be live!
The reason why I could really do with some advise on this one is because the supplier is charging me for the whole team that turned up (about 6 guys) for about 5 hours with the overhead work when I was just expecting to pay for the two guys for a couple of hours to fix my temporary supply not half the road! I have offered to pay them what I think is fair but they say they will bring me to court if I don't cough up in full!
Any advice would be most welcome from the pros!
cheers
Shaun
I would really appreciate some advice on the following problem I have had with a temporary electric supply.
We are in the process of building a couple of flats and had a temporary supply put in, no problem! However much later when one of the labourers was putting the hockey sticks into the new boxes and needed to bust through some of the footing he stupidly damaged the cable with a breaker and grazed the cable exposing the outer sheath (cable was not severed) and there was a load bang and the cable started fizzing in the hole which was filled happened to be filled with water!
We called the supplier out to repair and two guys turned up to repair the cable and one of them got a zap of the cable as he tried to repair it. Before this the same labourer got a zap off the site cabin handle after he went through the cable.
We then had the two neighbours that lived down the lane come out and say there TVs had blown up!
The engineer said that there was no way that us going through the cable would have caused the TVs to blow and it was just a coincidence! I just don't believe that as it happened at exactly the same time!
He then called his boss and about 5 vans pulled up within about 20mins and started to take down the over head cables to the main road. They replaced a stretch of the cable and were working on one of the poles.
I don't remember exactly what our sparky said but he thinks that the supply cable had an existing fault and that the sheathing was somehow live and that's what caused the cabin to become live when it was damaged and the cable was possibly 'vibrating' and caused a surge down the line to blow up the TV's. This he says may be why the engineer got a shock as he didn't expect the sheathing to be live!
The reason why I could really do with some advise on this one is because the supplier is charging me for the whole team that turned up (about 6 guys) for about 5 hours with the overhead work when I was just expecting to pay for the two guys for a couple of hours to fix my temporary supply not half the road! I have offered to pay them what I think is fair but they say they will bring me to court if I don't cough up in full!
Any advice would be most welcome from the pros!
cheers
Shaun
