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duncanlowe · 1st Sep 2020, 6:12 pm

My brother asked me to look at his house wiring a few times. A shower wired in 2.5mm with 30A fuse wire in a 5A carrier was one, but worse was an issue in the kitchen, I think same house. There was a double socket blanking panel there. It was right by where they wanted the kettle, so he asked me to see if we could put an actual double socket there. I turned off the power and removed the plate. Yep, two lots of 2.5 T&E, joined by chocblock. Odd though, only the N and E had two conductors in, the L had only one. Working from the consumer unit, the ring mains was only a ring on N and E, L being open circuit so, NOT a ring main anymore. It became clear that because the cables had been brought into the box from the side, a fixing screw had puncture the L conductor in one of the cables and blown it away.

The other nasty but probably not as unsafe was my parents house. Built back in the day when cables were run at any angle to keep cable runs as short (and therefore cheap) as possible because copper was expensive, the ring main in the kitchen went across one way, the cooker supply the other, so they needed to cross. No way that can happen in a plastered external wall, so they had bodged a big hole in the breeze block in a couple of places and ran the cooker cable in the cavity. Running at an angle like that meant that the main equipotential bond to the incoming water was missing it's insulation due to a hole for kitchen shelves, luckily not missing the conductor as would have been if it were mm further to the side. Oh, and all of the pipework was stainless steel, including the gas, which is apparently a no-no.

1st Sep 2020, 6:12 pm	#48
duncanlowe Nonode Join Date: Jan 2016 Location: Stafford, Staffs. UK. Posts: 2,532	Re: Bodges My brother asked me to look at his house wiring a few times. A shower wired in 2.5mm with 30A fuse wire in a 5A carrier was one, but worse was an issue in the kitchen, I think same house. There was a double socket blanking panel there. It was right by where they wanted the kettle, so he asked me to see if we could put an actual double socket there. I turned off the power and removed the plate. Yep, two lots of 2.5 T&E, joined by chocblock. Odd though, only the N and E had two conductors in, the L had only one. Working from the consumer unit, the ring mains was only a ring on N and E, L being open circuit so, NOT a ring main anymore. It became clear that because the cables had been brought into the box from the side, a fixing screw had puncture the L conductor in one of the cables and blown it away. The other nasty but probably not as unsafe was my parents house. Built back in the day when cables were run at any angle to keep cable runs as short (and therefore cheap) as possible because copper was expensive, the ring main in the kitchen went across one way, the cooker supply the other, so they needed to cross. No way that can happen in a plastered external wall, so they had bodged a big hole in the breeze block in a couple of places and ran the cooker cable in the cavity. Running at an angle like that meant that the main equipotential bond to the incoming water was missing it's insulation due to a hole for kitchen shelves, luckily not missing the conductor as would have been if it were mm further to the side. Oh, and all of the pipework was stainless steel, including the gas, which is apparently a no-no.