Fault finding. never trust Appearances.

telectrix · Dec 20, 2018

as title, just been called out to a fault, 1st floor and attic conversion no lights.
arrived at the house to find as title. 1970's CU in cellar. MCB labelled cellar and upstairs lights.
cellar light working.
all cabling in cellar surface.
top of cellar stairs is a switch. T/E and 3core/E entering it.
seems like standard 2 way switch, but there's no sign of a 2nd switch for cellar.
tracing cable in cellar, T/E to cellar light, 3 core from there to switch with red as L, blue as N, yellow as S/L back to cellar light. so T/E that you'd expect to be L and S/L then feeds upstairs lights from the switch.( L& N). the 2 reds in common had been twisted ( bad practice with solid core) back in the dark ages and the L to the upstairs lights had snapped. quick strip and terminate.... lights back on. 30 minutes on site and £40 in arse pocket.... winner.

Deleted member 9648 · Dec 20, 2018

Todays ballache
Went to a house to install an external socket to plug in one of those tacky blow up illuminated snowmen beloved of certain folk. Newish insulated dual RCD board,(CED...OMG, feckin awful) odd....everythings on one side! Open up,the ground floor ring is on a non RCD way, and everything else on one of the RCD's. Inevitably there was a N-E fault 0n the ring....2hrs to rectify, but why everything else was lumped on one RCD is a mystery as no other issues found, another hour to split circuits evenly over the two RCD's. Obviously the DB installer found the ring tripped the RCD so just got around it by taking it off the RCD! Then got on with what I went there to do!