Exterior lights and heaters

Elmer BeFuddled · Oct 31, 2012

My local, gawd bless em, had 2 I/R(?) heat lamps nicked, as in the cables were just cut and the lights ripped out of the wall.

Now, as a favour, I had a quick shufty to see why the remaining heat lamp, and the 4 post lamps no longer work. All are fed through a 45A DP SFS.
That's live. The feed out is live. But every junction box (conduit) cover I've removed, which is not all, have choc blocks which give me intermittent live/dead results. My "voltstick" (trust me, I don't trust it, it's an indicator) is giving me even more intermittent results. I removed the cables sticking out of posts/walls where the the heaters were stolen from as a matter of moral conscience as I got live readings at one of them, but not the remaining one. That was as dead as a dodo.
Because of the intermittent faults I was getting from the choc blocks I traced the wires back as far as I could and disconnected, putting single Wago's on the 3 cables. Did I do right? I've told them that in my opinion it could be potentially lethal, but I'm not looking for a job!

Paul.M · Oct 31, 2012

Elmer I think the best way forward is to disconnect at the dis board and bell out the cable that you think is dead. You may have a loose connection on the N or CPC and giving you bad readings L to earth/neutral. The cable may be damaged before the heat lamps, check it out mate. Do an R1+R2, R1+Rn and an IR test to find out and take it from there. Make sure any local iso switches ar in the closed position before starting any tests (yep I'm telling yu how to suck eggs but it may help others reading this).

Richard Burns · Oct 31, 2012

If the cables are connected in terminal strip in conduit and the thieves first just tried to pull down the heaters then they could have pulled cables out of the terminals or damaged the cables around corners / cable entries.

Isolating as far as possible as you have done is an effective temporary solution, switching off the SFS would be an idea as well.
As Paul says you would need to determine the run of the circuit and test. If you have a cable tracer and can apply a signal at the SFS you can follow that way checking for breaks.

Elmer BeFuddled · Nov 1, 2012

Richard Burns said:
....switching off the SFS would be an idea as well......

Sorry, I should of mentioned I'd isolated at the SFS and the fuse is in the continuity tester pouch!

The reason I didn't, at that time, dig too deeply was I'd no steps to get high enough to remove counduit JB covers. I'm going back sometime tomorrow when I've got my Fluke with me to do some proper checking out. Many thanks for the pointers.

Elmer BeFuddled · Nov 2, 2012

Well round today with Fluke. Voltage test dead. Switch on, still dead. Ok thinks I, lets do some deeper tests. Connect Rn & R1 together, nip to switch, which is isolAted, remove switch, ooh lucky me! No need to remove the N2 as flapping in the breeze. Job sorted!