View the thread, titled "When electrics go wrong!!!" which is posted in UK Electrical Forum on Electricians Forums.

D

Darkwood

Just setting up a new sticky thread that unlike the dodgy trade pics thread is focused on showing the result of failures in electrical installations IE - damage caused which may be due to various reasons. Please do not post pics of poor workmanship if there is nothing else to show like the consequences, use the dodgy pics thread for that.

I will start off below with an example. I am hoping the fresh faced members and inexperienced can get a visual incite of what to expect when you come across such things and how to understand what has occured.
 
This definitely went wrong for my mate yesterday. He got a call out for an RCD tripping in a shop so went to have a look, managed to fix that fairly quickly and whilst he was there they said can you have a look at our lights so he did. It was a grid ceiling with 600x600 LED panels in, and the way they were wired was with a plug/socket type affair on short leads and T-pieces. The name of the plug escapes me for now but its a flat 3 pin plug same as these.

IMG_20231013_173907_446.jpg


You can get short leads with a male plug on one end and a female socket on the other you then use 3/4/5/etc way splitters like above to give you ways for the lights which obviously have a male plug fitted. We fitted loads of them the other year on shop refits, I didn't like them as you couldn't really support the cables between the lights and they just ended up on top of the grid, also they were really hard to push together and engage the clips and sometimes if you pulled them apart it broke the T-splitter instead exposing the pins.

Anyway, some of the lights weren't working (not one of our jobs by the way) so he goes into the grid ceiling to have a look, grabs one of the leads at a junction and gets a big electric shock, falls off the ladders, cuts his leg and twists his knee quite badly. Turns out that the T piece had melted and exposed the connection, probably because it was never fully pushed together. He's been to A&E today and they said he has probably damaged his ligaments.

So not too sure who is at fault really, I suppose by the book he should have turned the power off, locked the MCB off and got the barriers out, tested dead etc etc but when you are fault finding like that you really need to do it live in order to find where the live bit ends and the fault begins, which he certainly did do yesterday. Or is the shop at fault for letting someone near their dangerous electrics? I'm not too sure how the shock was that bad but he reckons he thought his number was up and can't remember falling off the ladders, just getting up off the floor. He was on fibreglass steps, boots and carpet so it wasn't that, must have been the ceiling grid that was earthed, either that or it just wen't between the pins in the plug via his hand and he was being over dramatic about the shock to justify falling off the ladders.
 
Thought you would enjoy this one:
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A new extension was built which needed a new CU. The problem the builder faced was the Henley block was full.
No problem, remove the tails that feed a switched fuse and SWA for static caravan and connect his screwfix special there.
Then sacrifice his RCD plug extension lead, and connect the flex into the switched fuse and plug in it into a new socket.

The static caravan had a hot tub, a tumble drier and several fan heaters.
 
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Seems the most approiate thread for this - a quick reminder in always proving dead!

One of the more interesting jobs i was issued involved going inside a building that had been closed down & boarded up for about 8 years. Naturally it had been broken into a fair bit, fires started, undesirables generally trashing the place and the inevitable metal theft. Bear in mind everything had been smashed or destroyed in some way. No obvious signs of power - no lights (the few that were left intact) or such on. I came across one of the boards, with the remains of the singles that had been cut off by the metal thieves hanging out of it and could so easily have just shoved my hand in there....but decided to offer a volt stick up to it before getting the probes out....and yep - all live! Quite how none of those cut ends had come in contact with each other I'll never know....

I ended up finding the intake room and disconnecting each of the supplies to the boards, then the DNO came and removed their fuses.

The interesting thing is, they can't have cut through the cables, and them remain live - if nothing else breakers would have tripped. It was almost as if they'd cut through the cables and then turned the circuits back on again! Maybe a nasty trap left. Who knows

Anyway - don't assume. Always prove dead even if it seems unimaginable that it could still be live
 

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