DIY Very Big Bang

[Ricard]

I am not a professional electrician and am posting this partly for your general amusement and partly to get some background advice.

My son who has recently moved into a rented flat in Nottingham having got his first job there, decided to put up some coat hooks. He seems to have taken insufficient notice of the fact that the consumer unit is above where he was drilling. Apparently there was a very big bang and the hole shown in the picture appeared without any further exploration on his part.

He phoned me for advice and sent me the pictures, mentioning that none of the fuses seemed to have blown and everything is still working. I explained that the reason no breakers had tripped was that these are the main cables coming into his consumer unit and therefore before his breakers. I am a bit surprised that the company fuse didn't blow, but I guess it must have been a very short bang.

My advice was call your landlord's agent, you need an electrician because there is no way you should attempt to do anything with this.

The consumer unit is near the ceiling on the opposite side of the wall to the meter cupboard.

My questions are first will there be any way to fix this other than digging out the cables and replacing them from the meter to the consumer unit.

Secondly to ward against the agent inflating the cost, what sort of ball park cost should it be.

Finally, is it appropriate for the main cables to be buried in the wall without any protection (from idiots).

 

[Simon47]

However the current regulations do not permit this ...

Which doesn't stop sparkies doing it on new builds and signing it off as compliant.
Mother was looking at buying a new build not long ago, she pulled out from it - but I was very tempted to get the sparky in who's signature was on the signoff, hand him a big nail and a hammer, and invite him to stick it in the wall where the meter tails were buried.

I'm sure if the whole cutout and meter arrangement was to be designed from scratch today it would be quite different.
...
It is not the damage done to the network which is the issue with 'yanking' the DNO fuse, it is the serious risk of injury to the person doing it or the long term fire risk if they don't carry it out properly.

I would have thought that (from the supply industry PoV) the main reason is that a main fuse without a seal is scope for easy bypassing of the meter.

 

[DefyG]

Ask the general public what a 'Safe Zone' is and 95% will not know.

Exactly! that's why I said 'supposed'. The remaining 5% that do know will be sparkies!

 

[Simon47]

And it's why the rules specifically do not allow reliance on safe zones for protection for installations under the control of ordinary users.

 

[richy3333]

First I’ve seen this thread. Suprised the son wasn’t toast. Glad he’s ok though.

 

[telectrix]

First I’ve seen this thread. Suprised the son wasn’t toast. Glad he’s ok though.

where you bin hiding?