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Old 1st Sep 2020, 2:13 pm   #41
Techman
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Default Re: Bodges

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Originally Posted by Ed_Dinning View Post
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
I thought this was quite normal out in the countryside for everyone to have a death lead to connect the generator to the house electrics when there was a power cut!
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 2:30 pm   #42
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A former colleague once had the job of temporarily connecting an air conditioning unit taking 20 amps to a ring main. He took the easy approach and fitted two mains leads each with a 13 amp plug and plugged both into a double socket.... All was well until somebody else came along and removed one of the plugs to power something else... and then trod on the plug he had just removed....

Many bad words were said.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 4:49 pm   #43
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Over the years I saw many horrendous dangerous joins made to mains leads.
If I customer brought a set in for repair we would always check the plug correct any faults, very often the lead was wired over the top of the flex grip and over half had a 13A fuse fitted. we always did this free of charge. If we found a dangerous mains lead we would ask permission to replace it and only charge for the replacement wire no charge for fitting.
Customers always agreed to this without problem. With the exception of one...
The set was a Thorn 8000 or 8500 . The mains lead had a join in it just as it exited the set, This was a piece of "chock block" and had bare wires poking out of it. then further down the lead there was two joins bound in black tape with two bits of cut off flex sticking out of them and then finally a foot from the plug a join made with $cotchlocks! (Or Something like that, it was a while ago!)
When we rang to speak to the owner his wife answered the phone and said her husband wouldn't be happy if we changed the lead so we best leave it. we explained that we couldn't repair the set and leave it like that as we would probably be liable if something happened.
She then gave permission to change the lead. we duly did this and put the old lead less plug in a plastic bag with the set.
When the chap came to collect the set we placed it on the shop floor while he paid the bill. He paid and then saw the bag on top of the set. "what's that?"
We explained about the lead and why we had to change it. We explained that we had been given permission by his wife.
The bloke instantly went into a rage saying we had no right , he didn't want the new lead, he connected his lamp to that! Pointing to the old lead..
We tried explaining but it was no good he wasn't listening. he shouted I don't want that ! And then he wrenched the new lead out of the set which tipped it over onto its front, bringing the flex grip and half of the on - off switch with it!
He threw the new lead on the floor picked up his set and stormed out!
By this time everyone had come out of the workshop and was standing behind the counter. As he banged the shop door shut one of the engineers said "Funny chap" turned around and went to put the kettle on..
Somewhere I still have the video tape from the security camera . Whenever something worth keeping was recorded I kept the tape. I do have a few...
It was a pleasant read, but you failed to mention if the irate so and so, paid for the repair?
It takes all kinds!
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 4:58 pm   #44
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Default Re: Bodges

The one that still gives me a shiver was the result of a dodgy builder. They had refitted the bathroom, including the electrics, and had put a nail through a live conductor replacing the floor. It could happen to anyone. I guess they discovered it when the earth leakage detector tripped out, so their fix was to reverse L/N in the distribution panel - not so much leakage from N to E I suppose!

I discovered it getting out the bath, stepping on the wooden floor and discovering N was not EXACTLY at earth potential!

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Old 1st Sep 2020, 5:28 pm   #45
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One of the first things I was taught was to check the sets plug wiring, all its fuses and the chassis was not live.
Some horror plug wiring as noted in these threads.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 5:30 pm   #46
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-A lighting circuit on which the neutral was switched. Oddly (and we're not quite sure how) a CFL tipped us off that something was wrong- the landing light was seen to flicker dimly in the small hours. The very same landing light switches were wired in series- both had to be 'down' for the lamp to work.

- My best friend's father used so much PVC tape on bodges and mods to the mains circuits that it was known as 'Eddie tape'. In a strange twist my mate says it's a death-trap in the loft but has not let anyone near it to check it over for the last 30 years. Eddie was in the army for many years and became inculcated with the culture of 'field repairs' to the extent that none of his repairs were really satisfactory.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 5:54 pm   #47
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House main fuse, a length of 22mm pipe.
 
Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:12 pm   #48
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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.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:16 pm   #49
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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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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:31 pm   #50
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Default Re: Bodges

I always thought that this was an interesting way to connect two devices when you only have one plug!
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:36 pm   #51
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I've seen T&E used to wire a '2-way' switching system (one switch by the door the other a pull-cord over the bed) for a bedroom light. Thankfully I spotted 'something not right here' before wiring the metal outer shell of the new light-fitting to the 'earth' terminal on the ceiling-rose.

I've also seen 3-core 1mm round-section PVC flex channeled/plastered into a wall and used to feed light-switches.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:40 pm   #52
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Oh now, I remember another. I was putting in an extra spur socket in my girlfriends house for a 'new fangled' cordless phone. As I started to connect it to the existing ring, I discovered that there was such a thing as 2.5mm PVC twin. No, not T&E just T. The bodger in question had realised that an E was required so had stripped the E out of some 0.5mm flex and used it. So my girlfriend returned to her house to find it in darkness with fllorboards up everywhere, so immediately went of to her mum's down the road. Must have been OK with it though as we are still married 30 years on.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:44 pm   #53
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Not sure whether it counts as a 'bodge' but more than once I've seen the live-pin-and-fuse of a BS1363 plug replaced by a neutral-pin scored from another plug so it's fuseless.

Typically on things like electric welders, which take quite a nasty surge-current. Given the intermittent duty-cycle, plugs bodged in this way don't seem to suffer the expected self-immolation when asked to pass 25A or so.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 6:58 pm   #54
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Originally Posted by OldTechFan96 View Post
I always thought that this was an interesting way to connect two devices when you only have one plug!
Bought a small lathe and when it turned up, it also had a separate flexible light wired to the lathe plug like this!!
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 8:14 pm   #55
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At Plessey Ilford they once had a poster campaign, advising engineers not to wire up plugs themselves, but to get the electricians do things properly. We had recently had them install some additional 13A sockets in our workbenches in readyness for a new project. The bench had wooden trunking (essentially a plank screwed at 45° in the corner between the rear of the work surface and the vertical back board). When I plugged a second soldering iron (resting on the same heat sink as the first), into one of the new sockets, there was a flash and the bench's circuit breaker tripped. Resetting and testing with an Avo established crossed L and E, and unscrewing the offending socket (after isolating the bench supply at the wall) revealed that the bench wiring was in solid conduit wire. They had evidently run out of green wire, and all the new sockets had red wire for both L and E. The electrician had not bothered to sleeve the "earth" Red, and had got the two reds transposed half way along. As the sockets were screwed into wood, and the fixing screws passed through eyelets connected to earthed metal strips at the back of the sockets (plastic), the screw heads used to secure the incorrectly-wired sockets were also live.

Last edited by emeritus; 1st Sep 2020 at 8:35 pm. Reason: Typos
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 9:41 pm   #56
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Default Re: Bodges

I remember one of my college tutors mentioned about some fires in shops caused by 12v spot lighting being connected up with bell wire.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 10:00 pm   #57
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I remember one of my college tutors mentioned about some fires in shops caused by 12v spot lighting being connected up with bell wire.
It must have been common enough for there to be a ban in the UK on 'non qualified' people installing anything other than prewired kits because of the risk of underrated wiring. I think it was part of the part P change. I do remember a stash of bargain 'transformers' being sold off by B&Q.
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Old 1st Sep 2020, 11:04 pm   #58
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Default Re: Bodges

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Originally Posted by avocollector View Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldTechFan96 View Post
I always thought that this was an interesting way to connect two devices when you only have one plug!
Bought a small lathe and when it turned up, it also had a separate flexible light wired to the lathe plug like this!!
Quite a common bodge with Hi-Fi separates as they always want the receiver/ amp, plus one (usually the tape deck). Still, I guess it's an improvement over the bare L+N shoved into the switched/ unswitched outlet(s) round the back!

Foil-wrapped speaker protection fuses are another connoisseurs' choice from the Hi-Fi underworld - complete with magic smoke guarantee or your money back!
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Old 2nd Sep 2020, 3:24 am   #59
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Default Re: Bodges

Two mains leads into one plug was very common.
When Granada started to rent VHS machines as well as TVs it was determined that Something Had To Be Done, A two-way adaptor? Wrong!

The Granada double-outlet safety connector.

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The single fuse version was to add a local fuse on an otherwise infused outlet, there were still plenty of round-pin sockets around. They were not supposed to be used to extend a mains lead, although inevitably that happened.

Two leads in one plug is arguably safer than the so-called safety connector. In those days sockets were often at skirting board level and the connector got bashed or trodden on. The fibre cord grips weren't marvellous and the nuts and bolts securing the two halves had no shake-proof waders and were not captive they often had missing screws. On the other hand, the plugs we always used were these roomy MK ones, arguably the best ever made.

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Old 2nd Sep 2020, 4:04 am   #60
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A similar anecdote to emeritus's post#55
This time they'd used all the right colours, but not necessarily in the right order.

Pharmacy consultation room in a well known supermarket (you know, the place where they may well connect you up to mains powered diagnostic equipment) Major re-fit
Two dual gang sockets next to each other, one BS 1363 the other Electrak. I had a PC plugged into one and when I plugged the screen into the other there was a flash and a bang. Got the electrician working nearby to reset the breaker.

I had a hunch what had happened so I connected my meter between the fixing screws. 240V AC.

I'd seen enough and went to get the foreman electrician from the Portacabin outside.
Apparently that area was supposedly all tested ans signed off.

Fortunately the only casualty was the graphics card in the PC.
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