Electricians Tips from a professional electrician

[littlespark]

Electricians Tips from a professional electrician in the UK Electrical Forum

Sometimes you need to work in an old house, and there’s a number of threads on here about how to, say, fit downlights in a lathe ceiling.....

Here’s a start... on lathe and plaster walls without making a huge mess....

Mark where you want the socket to go. Height wise, measure an existing one from either the floor or the top of the skirting.


Next, use a pad saw to find a gap between the lathes. Hit and miss jabbing with the saw until it breaks through.

I will be using a regular dry lining box, so you don’t want to be too close to a vertical joist. Use the pad saw to feel to the left and right. If you can feel a joist, just adjust your planned position.

Once you have the final position, you can draw around a regular metal back box to give your cutout size.

Using a multi tool on a fairly slow speed, you can chip away at the plaster, but not the lathe quite yet.
yet.

Now, with the multi tool on a high speed and a fine toothed wood blade, you can cut neatly through the lathe without much problem. A small wood screw screwed into the middle of the lathe and held tight in pliers will help as the lathe will want to push into the hollow wall.

Now for the biggest tip I can give. Very very important whenever you are doing anything like this;



Always remember to charge your phone fully, or it will die when you’re in the middle of trying to make a hints and tips thread???

 

[Intoelectrics]

The world has gone mad with all this diversion, inclusion and discrimination b*****ks. Its just another good excuse for the lawyers to get even richer.

Anyhow back to the thread, another simple good tip that serves well - measure twice cut once! I'm overseeing a large project and we have had some architectural drawings done by a professional structural engineer. I was just about to send the drawings into the steel fabricators so they could order the pre cut materials. luckily I checked the drawings and found a measurement discrepancy which would have cost a fair whack and delayed the project. It turned out to be a "software" glitch on cad!

 

[Lister1987]

The battleaxe, the ball and chain, trouble and strife, She who must be obeyed....the list goes on

 

[Mike Johnson]

 

[littlespark]

My rock, my soulmate, the love of my life.... ?

 

[DPG]

My rock, my soulmate, the love of my life.... ?

Winston Churchill?

 

[telectrix]

View attachment 86740

ever a true word. so many years later we have all the vegans, snowflakes, and gender neutrals coming out of the woodwork.

 

[nicebutdim]

An update to this vacuum pedantry...

While Hoover is indeed a brand name that should not be used as a generic term, it is possible to Hoover with any brand of vacuum cleaner as many dictionaries (including Oxford) define Hoover (verb) thus: 'To clean something with a vacuum cleaner'.

I lived this day and learned.

 

[littlespark]

I’m going to market one of those all-in-one remote controls and name it a “doofer”

 

[telectrix]

xcuse me a minute whilrst i HENRY the floor.

 

[Mike Johnson]

And I am just about to go to bed after I have ORBIT my teeth.

 

[casperLennon]

Worst thread ever. It sucks

 

[nicebutdim]

xcuse me a minute whilrst i HENRY the floor.

I don't make the rules about how you can describe whatever it is you do to floors ?

 

[pirate]

Trying to bring this thread back on track...may we please have some more tips that help us in the daily grind?
I always carry assorted dowels and wooden golf tees...they can fill out an oversize hole that won't accept a rawl-plug, and wooden biscuits and mitre glue can save your day too.

 

[Lister1987]

Trying to bring this thread back on track...may we please have some more tips that help us in the daily grind?
I always carry assorted dowels and wooden golf tees...they can fill out an oversize hole that won't accept a rawl-plug, and wooden biscuits and mitre glue can save your day too.

Can do similar with copper offcuts if you've got a hole that's slightly too big, curl that copper into a tight enough shape to fit tht hole then screw away.

 

[nicebutdim]

Piece of copper wire is also useful wound around the base of small hole saw arbors, to prevent saw becoming seized to arbor.