Immersion fault

[Mike P]

Went to a job today. Here is the story. No power to Immersion. The immersion has not been used since the house was built (seventeen years ago). Central heating broke down recently and customer went to use above and no luck. New boiler and tank fitted, plumber checked elecs and told him to call a spark. (sorry the set up was so long)

Checked feed and did continuity checks. No earth and neutral, supply Line phase conductor OK. I pulled up the slack cable behind dry lining (no capping conduit etc) in airing cupboard into back box only to find the cable cut through Neutral earth about three inches bellow box.
It's obviously been like that from the first fix and tests cannot have been made. Lucky the cut was there I suppose.
Is this poor finishing common in the bigger market place?

 

[tony.towa]

It's an unfortunate thing that all sorts of bad practice occurs in all aspects of the industry. Quite often you will find corners have been cut in new build estates because a sparks is "borrowing" materials for doing his own work. T & I is very often not completed correctly on new build estates. The first few are done right then slowly some of the odd ball results are replaced with averages taken from previous results. I had to do a random check on a new build estate some time ago, as a result of problems some of the purchasers had encountered, and it resulted in the main contractor being called back to do a full test again on all properties.

Work on the principal that nothing is how it should be!

 

[Mike P]

My concern in this case that the back box and bits in the airing cupboard were in danger of becoming live especially if plastic pipe was used in the heating and hot water system. I suppose this is where cross bonding and supplimentry bonding come into there own right.

 

[heathelect]

Went to a job today. Here is the story. No power to Immersion. The immersion has not been used since the house was built (seventeen years ago). Central heating broke down recently and customer went to use above and no luck. New boiler and tank fitted, plumber checked elecs and told him to call a spark. (sorry the set up was so long)

Checked feed and did continuity checks. No earth and neutral, supply Line phase conductor OK. I pulled up the slack cable behind dry lining (no capping conduit etc) in airing cupboard into back box only to find the cable cut through Neutral earth about three inches bellow box.
It's obviously been like that from the first fix and tests cannot have been made. Lucky the cut was there I suppose.
Is this poor finishing common in the bigger market place?

hiya mike obviously been like that from day 1, 17 years ago, i think we were a bit lacks regarding testing although testing should have taken place i agree that on sites once you had tested 1 house the others should have been about the same. I couldnt live with that idea ive always tried to do the testing as it should be done, how many times have you tested your own work and you found an earth snapped off on a terminal, that just goes to show the importance of testing and no one is perfect. regards dave

 

[PAUL M]

At least nobody can blame a Part P spark for it ,must have been a time served walla.