Pyro Cable Tripping RCD

[sl1210]

Went to a job in a church hall today where one of the power circuits was tripping the rcd. There seems to be 4 bad legs of pyro in the circuit, as I get a dead short in my IR tests between line/neutral, line/earth.

Is it common for pyro cable to do this after a certain time, or could a fault have caused this?

I have disconnected all the faulty legs and managed to keep the rcd on with only one socket working. I'm going to have to re-link the damaged pyro with new cable.

Was wandering if I could use 2.5mm FP cable clipped direct, or whether because its a church hall i would need to run it in plastic conduit???

Cheers

 

[Deleted member 26818]

why ? what happened there spin ?

Following some rather heated arguments between contractors and subcontractors about hours and rates of pay.
It was discovered that a number of cables no longer had end to end continuity.
This was discovered to be due to a number of cables having been accidently cut through along their lengths. Some of the cables being cut through in a number of places.
Fortunately after some negotiation and a willingness of the workforce to work overtime, everything was put right, and the line was opened in time for the millennium.
I believe the overspend was somthing in the region of £400 million (not all down to the damaged cables).

 

[Guest55]

accidents do happen when your pay packet is short ;-)

 

[UNG]

Yeah but when you get some of the cantankerous posters on this forum combined with the fact that most sparkies are not overly eloquent with the typed word you can see why people are reticent to post or don't explain themselves as well as needed, and then you go around in circles trying to fathom out the fault/issue.

I still maintain prayer is you greatest weapon in resolving this problem...

Or divine intervention

 

[UNG]

theres no shame in admitting you have no experience in pyro , its a dying skill that isnt taught anymore as its only used in a handful of building types.
i'm old enough to have been at college when it was still a practiced technique but its been over 6 years since i did any work on micc and i dont have , nor intend buying , the expensive tools to work with the stuff , and as such i avoid it like the plague.
i'll take fp200 any day as i know i can fix it in 2 minutes flat rather than fanny about for hours with blow torches and sealing putty.

While there a few on this board admitting they have no experience with Pyro it begs the question as to why you would take on a job where it is installed when you are out of your depth with it

As for tools as it has already been said there is a lot of ways of making a Pyro off without all the branded tools

And as far as FP200 and similar goes this is the most wrongly installed cable I have ever seen especially when installed for fire alarms. The number of fire alarms that don't comply with BS5839-1 all because somebody couldn't be ????? getting the clipping right for peoples safety this cable should be banned on fire alarms

 

[ackbarthestar]

tony mc i've got a megger mft1710 and only IR tests at 250v and 500v, so to answer your question no it doesn't test at 1000v.

Obviously, a 17th ed instrument, get a proper one an '18th ed' Claire insulation tester, delivers 5kV and knocks the little buggers off the end of the terminals......

TBH, it used to be, and still is, standard practice to use 1kV to remove illegal immigrants from the ends of pyro terminations, just before potting comences.