Thread: Bodges
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:16 pm   #49
bluepilot
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Duffort, Gers, France
Posts: 714
Default Re: Bodges

A friend bought a flat in Munich and I helped her out when she moved in by installing a few extra mains sockets. Although the wiring was all three-core cable, only live and neutral had ever been connected. Although earth was available in the fuse box, the earth conductor was unused. I decided to improve things by connecting up all the earths. The first few sockets worked OK but then power to the rest of the flat disappeared. After a bit of investigation it turned out that at some time in the past someone had drilled a hole in a wall and cut the live wire. The earth was unused so for the rest of the flat the earth wire had been used as live. When I connected it up as earth there was no live any more. Under the old German standard earth was red so I suppose it was almost right.
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