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

[Darkwood]

Right ... Just been nudged to set this up by Paul.M and sounds a good idea following recent threads I've done in the Arms..

Rules....No Offensive material... edit if required before posting as this is the public arena.
Anything to do with the trade or in and around it ...H&S pic's welcome.



I've posted this a few times and this is at a mates house following a kitchen refirb several yrs ago. mg_smile:

 

[Simon47]

at a guess the screws damage the ferrules

That shouldn't happen - if it does then the screws would also damage thicker stranded cable as well. The screws should have a flat end, which won't be a problem unless done up by a gorilla on steroids - something which would damage the thicker strands as well, if not more so.

allowing fine conductors to splay out causing loose connections

Nope. The ferrule should still contain the strands even if you cut a round hole in it with a badly formed screw. There's a risk of cutting strands, but then the loss of a small number of fine strands would have a proportionately smaller effect on the cable than cutting strands on a 7 or 19 strand cable.

Also the ferrule slightly increases the size of the conductor so some may be very tight to get in without 'modification'.

Now that I have met. Found the hole in the CU earth bar was a "snug fit" for an uncrimped 16mm ferrule, but a crimped ferrule had to be "carefully adjusted" to fit in it.

So basically the arguments come down to :
"Makes the cable too big" which could be valid, except doesn't most of this stuff now come designed to take something like 35mm cable ?
The terminal design/manufacture is defective

A while ago I tried to search for such restrictions and couldn't find any. The only reference I could find in any DNO documentations related to (IIRC) earth connections in substations where the minimum strand size was 2mm.

 

[littlespark]

won't be a problem unless done up by a gorilla on steroids

We are talking about DNO meter fitters here.

 

[telectrix]

so not a gorilla on steroids.... a monkey on smack.

 

[Simon47]

Mind you, at our church we had the opposite problem - the meter fitter must have left his 'driver at home because he didn't tighten any screws I'm quite serious, it's a good job some connections weren't heavily loaded.
There were tails into one of the isolators held in by gravity. And a neutral held into both the meter and a henley just by virtue of it being stiff - and he didn't get all the strands in at one end either. The DNO engineer who'd come out to answer my enquiries regarding supply characteristics was "unimpressed" - you could move every cable in it's terminations and we spent a while doing them all up before he put the fuse back and re-sealed everything.

 

[SparkyChick]

Here's a quality install... discovered this after turning off what I assumed were the lights for a couple of fitting changes only to find they were still live.

Lights on a 32A breaker. Clearly whoever did this lacked even the most basic of understanding. Big knockout opened on the top surface as well.

Rented property, young family with kids. Unsurprisingly no stickers, no circuit schedule, no labels... nothing. This is the worst one I've seen. Client also asked me to look into why the two way switching wasn't working... my guess would be the same clown worked on them and screwed it up.

 

[littlespark]

Right.... we’ve got excess copper showing at the terminals, holes knocked out for no reason... tails entering 2 different holes....
Second rcd not in use. (What have they done there? Chopped the pins off the bus bar?)

At least it’s a metal board, and they’ve managed to keep all the breakers the same manufacturer.

 

[FatAlan]

Love the way they’re using the middle RCD as a blanking module. Live and neutral tails going through separate un-grometted / glanded knockouts in metal box.

 

[SJD]

Hard to tell, but looks like the unused RCD has L & N outputs fed from the busbar?

Just possibly the installer didn't know what to do about that (hopefully not after having blown the house service fuse!), and rather than cut the busbar, thought it safer to just remove the N connections to/from the RCD?

At least the N cable with the crimped terminal waving around near the busbar has some tape over it for now - until the tape ages and peels or falls off …

 

[littlespark]

All the bits are there to fix this board up. Apart from a few blanking grommits.
The busbar appears to be able to be cut, or snapped apart to feed the right hand side split... Swap some of the breakers around to share across the 2 RCD's and connect the RCD's up with the internal wires that are there taped up. Theres 16 and 6 amp mcb's for the lights.
Im thinking now the busbar hasnt had any pins taken off, and its connected to the outgoing side of the rcd. Dont know if that can damage the rcd or not.
Busbar needs its insulating cover though.

Wiska gland for the tails, just need to drill out one of the holes to make it bigger.... I see an isolator i think.. makes job a little easier.

I see another set of tails... where are they going?

 

[Dustydazzler]

I thought it was one of my better efforts.....

 

[marconi]

I thought it was one of my better efforts.....

when you were 4, before you went to specsavers and using an ivory (ie: 'Insulated') handled knife as a screwdriver. ;-)

[automerge]1592062461[/automerge]
Sparkychick - can you name and shame to the 'authorities'? It looks recent.

 

[freddo]

Wow! It must have taken quite some effort to get it that bad, some serious skill level there. It's like absolutely everything is wrong.

 

[ferg]

Did they use an oxy acetylene torch for the rear knockout?

It must have taken a bit of effort to get so much wrong.

 

[Baddegg]

You just know been “bang” tested ALOT!.....

 

[Dustydazzler]

Is it really that bad...?

I mean atleast they fitted the rolls Royce of consumer units