Putting right a rented house that was used as a cannabis farm

WDMDL · Dec 3, 2011

Hmmm.
Had a look at a job today, just need a bit of advice on something...

Split load Wylex CU, all original circuits have been moved to the RCD side to make way for the rogue ones on the non-RCD side.

There are problems with very poor IR on the lighting and a scrape-able pass on the ring final 1.03M so some fault finding to do.
Lighting circuits disconnected for now.

Now, if I move the circuits back to their original places, I'm removing RCD protection.
Does that mean I'm going to have to RCBO them, or can they just go back to original.

Simon.

Guest112 · Dec 3, 2011

if the original was designed before the 17th then you shouldnt need to rcd all circuits at a depth of less than 50mm aslong as the cable routes are correct, you could put a recommendation for another rcd to make it a dual rcd board to cover yourself just incase

Paul.M · Dec 3, 2011

Quick answer is "you can't leave any installation worst off than you found it".

If your just reconnecting existing wires to the c/u without any alterations to the wiring (less than 50mm etc, etc) you can just do what you've said but then comes the interesting bit of finding all those faults after its been used as a cannabis farm? God knows what they have tapped into to get a feed for the loft or bedrooms. May be 2 days of testing and finding out or you may be lucky. (btw I've walked away from a similar job, mainly down to time on testing and the main thing money) good luck.

topquark · Dec 3, 2011

Depends what they are supply Simon, if it's a "special location" then no you shouldn't just move them over as you're making it less compliant than it currently is.....RCBO's are the way to go (apart from the alarm circuit

).

spark 68 · Dec 3, 2011

Hi,

As you are going to have to repair and test the circuits anyway, I would say they should be RCd'd, or at the very least the upstairs lighting circuit (for the bathroom).

I would be weighing up the combined costs for how many RCBO's required against the cost of a new dual RCD CU, or maybe it is possible to convert the existing CU into a dual RCD type.

Are you signing the paperwork for this ?
At the end of the day it is your call, bearing in mind the difficulty in doing any future upgrade/extension of circuits without RCD's

Paul.M · Dec 3, 2011

peterdaniels said:
if the original was designed before the 17th then you shouldnt need to rcd all circuits at a depth of less than 50mm aslong as the cable routes are correct, you could put a recommendation for another rcd to make it a dual rcd board to cover yourself just incase

Posted at the same time. Perfect answer Peter.

Guest112 · Dec 3, 2011

have you removed all the lamps and plugs? and if tncs isolate remove the neutral from isolated side and test have you done this, just curious

1shortcircuit · Dec 3, 2011

I had the pleasure of working in a property where one of the rooms on the Ring at the REAR of the house had been used as a crop growing room.

Testing threw up some very strange results and on investigation, some of the sockets (especially those in mentioned room) were showing very high resistence. After replacing every socket the circuit tested almost 100%.

morph · Dec 3, 2011

maybe the sockets are still stoned man

WDMDL · Dec 4, 2011

Cheers for the replies.

As far as I can tell, they had only used their own circuits for their activities.
So it's as I thought really, I can't just put things back to how they were a few months ago, as I would be downgrading protection on some circuits.

It's TN-S but as the meter had been tampered, BG have fitted a new one plus a REC2 so happy days on that side of things

The IR faults showed up (L+N)-E but I can't really do much more investigation until there's been some more cleanup done.

It's the older style Wylex CU with the u-notch busbars so probably not so easy to modify - but as there's only 1 ring, a couple of RCBOs for the lighting circuits should do the trick. So long as I haven't got a borrowed neutral to contend with too.

Simon.