J
J&M Electrical
Got a job today to swap a mains in a Flat (part of a large old house that has been converted into 3). It was only a little 3 way re-wireable jobby, so i turned the main isolater off which was in the flat and started disconnecting the old board. Got the old board off and found out where a extra cables in the old mains went. Their appeared to be 2 lighting circuits doubled up in 1 fuse but thought nothing of it because it was such a small board and the wiring was fairly dated. Anyway, got the new board ready and fixed it, started neatening the cables up ready to terminate when i got a belt. At first i didnt think it was a belt, i just thought I'd caught a sensitive bit of my finger on a sharp bit of copper, so me being me i touched it again and, yep, you guessed it, got another belt. We investigated it and couldnt for the life of us find how it was becoming live. The other tennants of the other flats were out so we couldnt get in them to isolate there power. We ended up using a terminal block until i was ready to power up. Connected the new mains up, ended up with 5 circuits instead of the 3, but only 1 lighting circuit. did the dead tests on all the circuits except this single red as it was still live. Anyway, turns out this Red fed the communal emergency lights and the neutral was taken from a light in the communal area. The communal lights are fed off a 2 way Board under the stairs in the entrance hall. And the Red would only become safe once the communal lighting circuit was isolated. However, if this Red was left disconnected neither the emergency lighting or 2 Bedroom lights in the flat would work. What should of been an hour job turned into a 2 hour nightmare trying to find out where this Red came from. We spoke to the landlord and he said he wired it up 1 sunday and there is nothing wrong with it, He wouldn't allow us to rectify the problem as he thought we were just trying to get more money out of him. So we ended up testing it, making notes on the test sheet, and putting labels on the Emergency lights and board to warn of the problem.
Nightmare.
Nightmare.
