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Old 31st Aug 2020, 8:27 pm   #21
kevinaston1
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Default Re: Bodges

One of our dealers came in to collect some spare parts and a repair.

Whilst he was having a cup of coffee, he recounted a recent story of a customer bringing in a Panasonic vacuum cleaner for repair. On examination, said cleaner had a 13A SOCKET on the end of its mains lead. This was queried with the owner who smiled and said he had brought the extension lead with him just in case; and produced a long mains lead with a 13A plug at each end.


Despite the dealer explaining the danger; the owner could not understand what the fuss was about his lethal extension cable.
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 8:45 pm   #22
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Default Re: Bodges

Ah the old "widow maker" lead, some people just don't get it at all, even when fully explained, you can try to make stuff idiot proof and then nature just evolves a better idiot. , as the saying goes a little knowledge can be dangerous.
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 8:51 pm   #23
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Default Re: Bodges

Hi Folks, another take on the widow maker lead.
My father in law's next door neighbour was a mean old curmudgeon, whose solution to getting power down his long garden was lengths of both cable and flex with a 13A plug on each end (all bought cheaply on the market or scrounged from the tip).
They were coupled together with 3 way 13A adaptors with the pins mm above the grass.
All this while the grandchildren we out there playing!

Ed
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 9:05 pm   #24
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Default Re: Bodges

I've seen those 'male/female' inline mains cable joiners fitted incorrectly such that the male plug was connected to the mains and the female socket to the appliance..
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 9:41 pm   #25
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Our youth club (middle 1980s) had a rather nice home-made disco mixer-amp which was dragged out of a cupboard every week. It had a mains connector which looked like an IEC thing, but the pins were on the flex and the female half was panel-mounting on the amp. Despite it having preceded me there by a decade or so, I think I was the only one to plug myself in with it
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 9:45 pm   #26
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The part in an earlier post about dodgy wiring in the garden where children were playing reminds me of the experience of a friend.

Not too far from here are some woods which once were a coal mine, but had been turned into a country park with trails through them and some roller-coaster tracks over what had been railway embankments. One of the ways into the woods from a local road was over a grassed area where once some cottages had stood. My friend was riding a highland pony (Effectively a large horse with short legs for low gearing for steep hills ) across this grassed access area when the pony leaped into the air, straight up, not the normal motion of a jumping horse.

The poor beast landed on the ground, dead. There was no obvious cause, it was assumed to be some form of fit or heart attack, but it was a young, healthy animal. Investigation found out it was electrocution, and that live bare wires had been left in the ground when the cottages had been flattened and grassed over. Children had been playing there for several years. Other horses had been ridden through as well, but it was the combination of wet weather and hooves in just the wrong places. It was only luck that meant none of the kids had been hurt. Maybe their reluctance to play on the ground when it's wet saved them?

So bodges, and just plain getting it wrong can be deadly at some indefinite time in the future and in a place where there seems to be nothing more risky than a mown lawn.

THe electricity board took responsibility and the owner was paid the value of the animal, but that doesn't compensate the loss of a pet and friend.

Currents in the ground are dangerous.

Everyone's heard the advice to never shelter under a tree in a thunderstorm. There are two reasons. The first one is that you can be hurt by flying shrapmen as water explodes into steam in the wood of a tree taking a direct hit. The second one is that the current spreads out through the ground radially spreading in three dimensions under the tree.

If you are stood nearby, your feet may be in places at different potential and given imperfectly insulating footwear, you can get a shock from current up one leg and down the other. Hence the further advice to keep your feet together. THis current can be large enough to be fatal, but if you are touching the ground as well, then you open up a path through the heart and the risks are far worse.

Cattle hooves are not insulated, and, as a quadruped, however the cow stands, lateral current in the ground will create current through the heart. Cattle like to shelter under trees in rain.

It is not unusual to find a lightning-struck tree with a circle of dead cattle around it. THis can be a major disaster for a farmer.

David
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 9:53 pm   #27
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Default Re: Bodges

The mention of "widow-maker" type leads puts me in mind of one of my vintage "electro-medical" devices, of foreign manufacture, which has (as manufactured) a (mains-live) male connector to which to connect its output device, as well as an exposed metal screw-head connected to the other end of the mains. Needless to say, I keep it for display-only purposes, have disabled its mains input and plastered it with the red PAT labels that prohibit it from mains connection. It would require a major redesign to render it safe to use.
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Last edited by Dave Moll; 31st Aug 2020 at 9:53 pm. Reason: clarification of reference
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 10:01 pm   #28
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i have seen my fair share of horror stories over the years but the one that still gives me the shivers involved my own family .My daughter is 42 years old now but one night some 40 years ago i went into the kitchen to find her sitting on the floor with the end of the kettle flex in her mouth the other end of course being plugged in and switched on .I quickly switched of and pulled the plug without saying a word .the next day i cut that cable down to around 8 inches long just enough to connect to the kettle
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 11:45 pm   #29
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OK - my father-in-law (now deceased) used to be the Fire Safety Officer in the Fire Service when I was first going out with my wife-to-be in the early 70's.

While he was at work, I was horrified to see that the fabric iron lead (remember those?) had frayed though. He'd bodged it with insulating tape. The Fire*Safety*Officer...

Even though I was a cocky young fella, I managed to bit back a comment when next I saw him. It could have ended a relationship then and there that has now reached 42 years of marriage.

Craig
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Old 31st Aug 2020, 11:56 pm   #30
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The other one that sticks in my mind from 30-odd years ago, when my son was tiny. I was working in the garden, and my wife calls down that the table lamp was not working.

So I unscrewed the fitting to see if there was a broken wire (the strain relief was not ideal), or the manufacturer had tinned the leads, or something similar. So I had the whole shebang apart on the carpet, took my hands away and said "OK - turn it on". "Oh - it *is* on!".

So - lesson to me - check something is switched off and unplugged first! Lesson to wife - please don't do that again!

Craig
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 2:18 am   #31
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Default Re: Bodges

I found a bodged plug with a bit of wire attached in some peat based compost I acquired from a landlord for use on an allotment to neutralize clay soil.
The landlord had rented the house to a naughty farmer and was not too pleased about the broken door left in the aftermath of Derbyshire police assisting the farmer with his harvest. The power company were no less pleased about what happened to their meter.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 4:40 am   #32
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Default Re: Bodges

I bought a Myford lathe from the estate of a model engineer who had been one of the bosses of the YEB, Yorkshire electricity board. It had a length of T&E between its 13A plug and the reverser switch. No sleeving over the bare earth wire.

I know that you mean about safety officers. The safety officer for our plant at HP drove the outrigger castor of a heavy little electric fork lift truck over his own foot while moving the machine because he thought it hadn't been left in a safe place. Some of these people seem to be there to act as a lightning rod. Nice chap, but you didn't stand too close.

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Old 1st Sep 2020, 10:19 am   #33
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler View Post

Currents in the ground are dangerous.

David
Many years ago I witnessed a dog lift its leg against an illuminated Keep Left sign that had a broken glass window in the side. The dog was unharmed but I suspect would not pee against Keep Left signs again.

Peter
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 10:27 am   #34
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I know that you mean about safety officers. The safety officer for our plant at HP drove the outrigger castor of a heavy little electric fork lift truck over his own foot while moving the machine because he thought it hadn't been left in a safe place.
Maybe it is something about Fire officers?

I can remember 47 years ago, an Assistant Divisional Officer (father of a rather lovely girlfriend). I was asked by his wife to do something or other, can't recall what. Anyway, I had to lift the carpet and found some transparent twin 3A lighting flex that was no longer transparent and had also been badly jointed with a chocolate block. It is too long ago to remember the fine details, but it WASN'T feeding a lamp, hence its brown and crispy coating.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 10:42 am   #35
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... I know that you mean about safety officers. The safety officer for our plant at HP drove the outrigger castor of a heavy little electric fork lift truck over his own foot while moving the machine because he thought it hadn't been left in a safe place ...
One of ours wanted to darken a lecture room to show a safety video and found that there were tables preventing him from reaching the blind cords. He climbed onto one of the tables. It was a tilt-top kind and it duly tilted, causing him to fall and break his collarbone.

Cheers,

GJ
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 11:33 am   #36
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kirstyd View Post
i have seen my fair share of horror stories over the years but the one that still gives me the shivers involved my own family .My daughter is 42 years old now but one night some 40 years ago i went into the kitchen to find her sitting on the floor with the end of the kettle flex in her mouth the other end of course being plugged in and switched on .I quickly switched of and pulled the plug without saying a word .the next day i cut that cable down to around 8 inches long just enough to connect to the kettle
When she was young, one of my aunts once licked an bakelite light socket on one end of an extension cable, not realising it was plugged into the mains at the other end.

Fortunately she was wearing rubber boots at the time so survived, but was on a liquid diet for a few weeks afterwards.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 12:37 pm   #37
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When she was young, one of my aunts once licked an bakelite light socket on one end of an extension cable, not realising it was plugged into the mains at the other end.

Fortunately she was wearing rubber boots at the time so survived, but was on a liquid diet for a few weeks afterwards.
Worse than the liquid diet, she'll have had to endure frequent ribbing about it until the people who knew about it had all popped their clogs... ditto the daughter with the kettle lead.

David
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 1:09 pm   #38
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Default Re: Bodges

Not quite a bodge, but Sam the old maintenance electrician at Thorn Automation where I worked would identify live and neutral by touching them. He had gnarly, dry old hands but not good practise nonetheless!
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 1:41 pm   #39
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Default Re: Bodges

I was helping a friend rebuild his kitchen about 20 years ago - before 'Part P' rules came in.

The recessed cooker switch/round-pin-15A outlet was all wired in classic rubber-covered red/black stranded T&E which was probably put there in the mid-50s when the house was built.

Yet the wire which emerged from the wall low down behind the cooker was different.

Yes, T&E but PVC-covered!

Ripping it out revealed that the joint between the 2 different cables had been made in the back-box-that-used-to-be-where-the-flex-emerged by pushing the ends into short lengths of what looked like the copper sheathing from MICC 'Pyro' cable which had then been hammered flat and taped-up. It had then been shoved back into the back-box which had then been filled with plaster and tiled-over, I guess by whoever bodged the 1980s kitchen-replacement into place.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 1:42 pm   #40
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The best attempted 'repair' I saw was when a tv set came in and I discovered that around half of the components had been snipped out! The customer shamefacedly admitted that they had first asked the milkman to take a look at it...
Well that's a new one on me!

I thought it was usually something completely different that the milkman was accused of when the husband was out at work, so that makes a refreshing change!

I've seen variations on most of the bodges described in this thread. I'll have to have a think about some of the good ones and post about one or two later on when I've had a think.
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