Tell us about your faults!

[kung]

Hi ALL
Just thought id put this one up for all those faults we find.
heres one to kick it off !
Domestic RCD tripped and wouldnt reset cause was a blown low energy light bulb.
There you go now for yours !

 

[needasparks]

Had a great job on friday in all that heat in a loft tracing cables. Doing corrections from a botched kitchen job where all sockets been extended as spurs off spurs, usual crock of. all ring extended correctly but still no cont to ring. all seemed original from seventies build so head scatch time and looked for rouge joint in loft as all cables went up. only way to do it was live up one leg and see where it stops, turns out for the last 40yrs a hallway s/spur had been wired wrong with one leg of ring in load so spent half an hour in loft for nowt.
Think i lost half a stone and my temper at the sparks of 40yrs ago.

 

[Kamikaze]

Well, today there was living proof of reincarnation. So many individuals could never possibly get to be this stupid in just one lifetime.

First job: Go to a school and reconnect the boys toilet hand dryer.
First question: Why has it been disconnected.
Teacher: We had an electrician out and he disconnected it because it keeps tripping the Mcb because it has an earth fault.
Second question: Has it been replaced?
Teacher: No we can’t afford to have it replaced.
Tested the hand dryer and it had indeed an earth fault on it.

Second job: Test and inspection on a house.
Checked it all out. Did the report. Attempted to go through about twenty defects on the list with the client so they understood what it was all about.
1[SUP]st[/SUP] defect: No earthing to the gas and water.
Client: That’s what the other electrician said.
Ignored that comment
2[SUP]nd[/SUP] defect: Exposed live conductors on a henley block.
Client: That’s what the other electrician said.
Ignored that comment
3[SUP]rd[/SUP] defect: Insulation falling apart on a lighting circuit.
Client: That’s what the other electrician said.
I said: What electrician? I don’t know what your on about.
Client: We had a test and inspection done last month and the other electrician told us all about the things that are wrong.
I said: So why then are you having it tested again?
Client: We were hoping you would find nothing wrong and it had all sorted itself out by now.

That must be why it’s called electrickery! :mad2:

 

[Robotstar5]

Worst I came across was my sisters first house (bought early 80's) the prevoius owner (BT engineer) had done a bit of rewiring. She was running a fan heater upstairs and noticed a warm/hot cable under the floorboards. After a couple of hours of inspection & testing I found:
Most of the lighting done with offcuts of 1.0 T&E and a bucket of choco blocks
Shower fed with 2 x 2.5 T&E
Immersion heater came out of CU in 4mm T&E but earth not connected then transitioned to 2.5 T&E for a run buried at 45 degrees across kitchen wall
Upstairs sockets on a radial in 1.5 T&E
I pulled the lot out and started again.
She told her neighbour (a sparky) about the rewire and he asked if she wanted a price, when asked if he could do it for less than cost of materials only he declined.

 

[ayjay]

i did a rewire on a bungalow with an existing roof extension ,the owner had wired it-
he used pieces of car-loom wire for the whole roof extension , it was joined up everywhere with choc block connectors
all of the wires had different colours & were different sizes

 

[Robotstar5]

i did a rewire on a bungalow with an existing roof extension ,the owner had wired it-
he used pieces of car-loom wire for the whole roof extension , it was joined up everywhere with choc block connectors
all of the wires had different colours & were different sizes

Did he show you the Haynes manual he had used for reference? :smile5:

 

[Daveash123]

First post in the main forum, thought I would share my experience below:The fault that sticks in my mind was at a food factory inSalford, about 15 years ago. We were asked to look at the flour delivery system with a view to upgrade the system. It was a pneumatic blowing system with a blower house at the silos with multiple compressor/blowers and a system of pipelines, diverters, rotary valves and worm conveyors, along with various limit switches and pressure switches to the delivery points inside the factory.The first part of the job was a survey over a weekend to plan the upgrade. Note that this plant had been in daily use for about 3 years.
As we looked into it we found that the main panel in the blower house was connected to the internal equipment (about 80 metres away) by a 100 pair CW1308 telephone cable. This ran from the main panel to a JB in the roof space and then out in various flexes to the machinery. On inspection we found that the cable had about 10 three phase supplies, a couple of single phase supplies and both 110V ac and 24V dc control circuits running through it. Granted that the supplies were only low power (up to .37kw), but it was a disaster waiting to happen. It had not been picked up as the engineering standards were lax to say the least and maintenance problems were usually at each end so they never picked up on the cable. Still amazes me how the cowboy worked out the colour coding from the twisted pairs and got the system working in the first place.
On the plus side, once we had reported this to the site engineer, we got the job to rewire the whole system and had many years as term contractors until the place closed down. The building is still in use as part of the Salford media city.

 

[ayjay]

rob ,haynes workshop manuels are notoriesy crap!

 

[ayjay]

we installed 22 night-storage heater into a library in lymington
the supply is overhead on poles
all was done and dusted
so-- we switch on to test
the lights dimmed a bit--h-mm all was good-ish
after about a week a posh fella in a suit from the seb(southern electric) turned up to said library and said-, " have you added any load ?"-me "yes,about 20/22 night storage heaters" he repyed "ive been looking for a week for this additional load!

the overheads couldn,t cope with the load, hence the library lights dimming a bit when the contactor shut

22 nightstorage heaters on start-up, thats a shed load af amps!

 

[Knobhead]

we found that the main panel in the blower house was connected to the internal equipment (about 80 metres away) by a 100 pair CW1308 telephone cable.
Still amazes me how the cowboy worked out the colour coding from the twisted pairs and got the system working in the first place.

Rule one with 100 pair cables on our plants was whoever made the cables off did both ends. This followed a major cock up when commissioning one plant, two guys had separately worked on the cables. The mix up of pairs took me ages to work out.

 

[rich.250]

Got called out yesterday to a refurb job just about to be started in a domestic property.
Basically no power at all in the property.
After a bit of looking round and finding the supply cupboard I found this.....


After a call to the local dno
I found out the property was deemed unsafe and they pulled the fuse.
But left the fuse out with live exposed parts!! Nice.

 

[ajpom1]

Called to a house with smoke coming from under the floor. The house had no earth and the customer had changed a socket and screwed into the line conductor. This had made all the earthing system live and the copper pipe under the floor was acting like a immersion heater.

 

[sedgy34]

I was called out to a property once the DB was burning away the Tennant reported the smell of burning plastic
It was the immersion and the fuse carrier had melted you could have lit a cigarette of it

 

[DNS]

I am due to install a new split load CU, at a neighbours house. After I saw where the CU is installed, in a small cupboard in the hallway. No regs when this was installed...?????

 

[rich.250]

I am due to install a new split load CU, at a neighbours house. After I saw where the CU is installed, in a small cupboard in the hallway. No regs when this was installed...?????View attachment 14559View attachment 14560

I think people are just ignorant!! Tbh.
I seen a new build last year with the db butted up against a gas meter.... Lol

 

[ayjay]

hi dns, is there any reg that says a db must be a ceartain distance from a gas meter?
the cables probably come in through the back, so you may have too fit the new db in the same place?