Tony, E54,
I can't believe that you are still trying to justify your advice.
YOU both, may, well be competent to remove the clamp.
YOU BOTH missed my point.
On a public internet forum, you advised the OP to break the law, and to undertake works that could have injured or killed him.
You had no idea of his background or training, the only information you had was the post and a small poor quality picture.
You both know the state of the industry in the UK, yet you both advised a person of unknown competence to undertake a task, which in the area of the job, the local DNO will not do as they have classed it more dangerous than a live cable cut.
That is my point and I still stand that by it, that your advice was incompetent.
How would you have felt if the next post on the OP's account had been from his widow explaining how he had followed your advice and the cable had blown and caused him to react and be electrocuted, and that his family had now lost their bread winner, she had lost her husband, and his children were now without a father.
You did not know enough about the OP, the situation, the condition of the cable, or the site, or in fact anything to make such a rash and possibly dangerous suggestion.
You both have probably done this on industrial sites in the past, where there is a lot of support and others around.
You may have done this when you were the only person around for miles.
In the WPD area there are a lot of 951 clamps and jubilee clip type connections having been made to their network over the years.
I have not had any of their people admit as to who made these connections, however, when you look at the numbers, then it was certainly not the odd spark or DIY'er.
They have had incidents and reportable accidents when removing these clamps, thus they no longer do it unless they have to.
The cumulative experience of WPD is that to remove one is more dangerous than to leave it, and is also more dangerous than to undertake a controlled, clean, live cut, on an undamaged cable.
So then it appears that between you you are more competent than all of the engineers, technicians and linesmen working for WPD, good on you.
I still think and will continue to think that you were and still are well out of order advising a completely unknown person to tamper with the national grid and undertake a task which is known by the DNO in the area he is doing it as life threatening.
As far as the work I do, yes I do have a lot of work, some of it has to be done live, I work for private domestic clients, for public sector bodies, such as the local authority, schools, and health boards, local & national companies, from sole traders, through SME's to large multinational blue chip organisations, quangos & HM Gov't departments.
One of the reasons I am not on here so much is that I am very busy at the moment.
I not only undertake the actual physical works, but I also undertake the design and the consultancy.
Oh and no Tony as the last paragraph suggests I don't actually work for the HSE, however, I do know a few of their inspectors including the local electrical and controls systems specialists.
I know the legislation and regulations because it is my job to know it.
