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:

 

[DPG]

The décor and red wires in the photo's from @Doomed remind me of a house in Coventry that I'll never forget. I ended up learning a lot about the former occupant as I got to know the family quite well. The guy was a retired RAF engineer, and former safety officer at Alvis and Dunlop works. He'd seen service overseas and been torpedoed/shipwrecked twice. He had a good innings and died aged 91.

He'd apparently (genuinely) been given a Wylex rewireable CU as a birthday present a few years previously but that was where anything standard ended. The house was entirely wired in 6mm red singles because according to his daughter he refused to spend a penny unless required and someone had donated several drums of it to him. (N and Earth were red throughout too). At every fitting there were solder and heat shrink connections to smaller conductors.
In addition there were some incredible inventions throughout the house including a remarkably engineered home made stair lift, curtains that opened and closed on a time clock, and even a crane to lower him into the bath. There were massive anchorages on the walls of the living room with ropes so he could pull himself around. The scene in Home Alone looked quite pathetic compared to his house!

In the back garden was a self-built winch for towing in his caravan powered by a three phase motor. This caused some confusion as the house has a single phase supply. Further investigation revealed a conductor running (apparently by agreement) to next doors shed. There was no 3rd phase connected but I did find a long lead that I think he used to hook it up as required so I reckon he had a deal with another neighbour.

I can only find two photo's from this and neither show the electrics, one was inside his workshop and I also noticed a rather incredible old magazine article which was apparently a Morris or Dunlop works magazine detailing how he had added an extra gearbox into a car to provide more ratios for towing his caravan. This intrigued me so much the daughter kindly later sent me a copy of it.

The guy was clearly an amazing mechanical engineer and obviously knew exactly how it all worked. I bet the occupant of the house in the other photos is a similarly interesting character.
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Fantastic!

 

[littlespark]

There’s the solution next time someone comes on the forum with a “Ive got a 3ph motor, but only single phase supply. What do I do?”

 

[ruston]

The décor and red wires in the photo's from @Doomed remind me of a house in Coventry that I'll never forget. I ended up learning a lot about the former occupant as I got to know the family quite well. The guy was a retired RAF engineer, and former safety officer at Alvis and Dunlop works. He'd seen service overseas and been torpedoed/shipwrecked twice. He had a good innings and died aged 91.

He'd apparently (genuinely) been given a Wylex rewireable CU as a birthday present a few years previously but that was where anything standard ended. The house was entirely wired in 6mm red singles because according to his daughter he refused to spend a penny unless required and someone had donated several drums of it to him. (N and Earth were red throughout too). At every fitting there were solder and heat shrink connections to smaller conductors.
In addition there were some incredible inventions throughout the house including a remarkably engineered home made stair lift, curtains that opened and closed on a time clock, and even a crane to lower him into the bath. There were massive anchorages on the walls of the living room with ropes so he could pull himself around. The scene in Home Alone looked quite pathetic compared to his house!

In the back garden was a self-built winch for towing in his caravan powered by a three phase motor. This caused some confusion as the house has a single phase supply. Further investigation revealed a conductor running (apparently by agreement) to next doors shed. There was no 3rd phase connected but I did find a long lead that I think he used to hook it up as required so I reckon he had a deal with another neighbour.

I can only find two photo's from this and neither show the electrics, one was inside his workshop and I also noticed a rather incredible old magazine article which was apparently a Morris or Dunlop works magazine detailing how he had added an extra gearbox into a car to provide more ratios for towing his caravan. This intrigued me so much the daughter kindly later sent me a copy of it.

The guy was clearly an amazing mechanical engineer and obviously knew exactly how it all worked. I bet the occupant of the house in the other photos is a similarly interesting character.
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That is the best post and tribute to a man on here for a long time.

 

[Doomed]

I never met the gentleman who created this lot, but apparently he was some form of Naval electrical engineer up to his retirement.
The place was also a horders paradise, stuff everywhere, and in later years he had done odd things like take out the stairs and put in ladders to make more space (you can see them in the pics just). I have no idea what most of it did, just odd bits like the SON street light clipped to the cupboard to light the living room (with the ballast etc all open and lying on the floor). He had a work bench in the rear room just covered with electronic stuff and cables going everywhere under the floor boards.
He was not allowed to return and a few months later I saw builders in there and lots of skips outside.

 

[ipf]

I like the mercury switches in pic 4, some sort of temperature control system. With the above units, it looks like a real Heath Robinson attempt at machine control and wouldn't surprise me if it did the job......whatever.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

An elderly friend who lived a few streets away had a similar house that he had lived in since the 1950s, packed to the rafters with all sorts of old gear some dating back to before WW2. It didn't have the spaghetti electrical installation, his infrastructure was all pretty normal and functional although some of that was 1930s and vintage in its own right.

When he had to move to sheltered accommodation he and his carer said I should come over and see some things that he wanted me to have. I offered him what I thought was a realistic price for them but he insisted that while he would accept a modest sum for a few specific items, whatever else we wanted was to be a gift for the museum or whatever we thought fit to do with it. That turned into three LWB transit loads and the house didn't look much different when we had finished. We still have boxes yet to unpack marked 'Fred's / unsorted' where Dave and I didn't have time to label everything. Whatever we left behind went into skips the following week when the builders moved in.

He lived a few more years and didn't seem to regret leaving that world behind. But I regret not having got to know Fred better, sooner, because we had so many shared interests. We had first met, although I did not know him by name then, when I was about 10 and he provided the sound and light for a local youth drama group in which I acted, but I had no real contact with him for many years. Little did I expect that three decades later I would own all his gear that had been used back then. Like some of the gear left to me by my early mentors, it has a special connection and is a pure joy to fire up and use.

 

[pc1966]

4th picture. Is that a calculator with retro red lcd display?

I was going to ask about that. It looks a lot like a TI scientific calculator I had around 1980

 

[pc1966]

In the back garden was a self-built winch for towing in his caravan powered by a three phase motor. This caused some confusion as the house has a single phase supply. Further investigation revealed a conductor running (apparently by agreement) to next doors shed. There was no 3rd phase connected but I did find a long lead that I think he used to hook it up as required so I reckon he had a deal with another neighbour.

Now that deserves an award for inventiveness!

 

[littlespark]

My brother had the TI99-4A home computer. Space Ivaders anyone?

Plug in game cartridges before Nintendo

 

[Julie.]

I was going to ask about that. It looks a lot like a TI scientific calculator I had around 1980

I thought that.

I had the TI-59 - it had little ROM cartridges, and you could programme it like a computer (Maths only really) - I used it through most of my first degree.

Didn't have the coloured buttons like that though.

 

[Doomed]

Whens a maintenance free JB not a maintenance free JB......

Got called to do a second inspection after a couple bought a house, they paid for an inspection before purchase, it came back with nothing to report, not a thing listed, not even old colour wiring.....
They called a plumber to do some work and he immediately said that they should get the place tested, which set thier alarm bells ringing and we got called in.
With minutes found plastic DB under stairs, no gas bond, the main earth in the MET was so loose a gentle tug pulled it out, 6mm on a 50A MCB.
The place had been DIY'ed rewired, bits were appalling. The client is now chasing the NIC about the people who did the first inspection.

 

[Julie.]

View attachment 90597
Whens a maintenance free JB not a maintenance free JB......

Got called to do a second inspection after a couple bought a house, they paid for an inspection before purchase, it came back with nothing to report, not a thing listed, not even old colour wiring.....
They called a plumber to do some work and he immediately said that they should get the place tested, which set thier alarm bells ringing and we got called in.
With minutes found plastic DB under stairs, no gas bond, the main earth in the MET was so loose a gentle tug pulled it out, 6mm on a 50A MCB.
The place had been DIY'ed rewired, bits were appalling. The client is now chasing the NIC about the people who did the first inspection.

Take a look at the other thread, there has been someone done for this exact thing.

Poor EICR report results in prosecution | on ElectriciansForums

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Before fixing, go to trading standards, they did a proper investigation in the other case, hence it wasn't swept under the carpet

 

[Mikegh]

View attachment 90597
Whens a maintenance free JB not a maintenance free JB......

I think you just nailed the problem right there

They've got to be installed properly and then they're only maintenance free til they get an inopportune splash of water ,you need to pull the cable or a rodent decides to use it for a nest

 

[westward10]

A nice Friday morning job doing a periodic.

 

[pc1966]

A nice Friday morning job doing a periodic.

I guess the note about checking the tightness of manufacturer assembled screws was not noted...