J9withdogs Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 Sometimes life throws stuff at you that makes you just stop and think! Back in May, the organiser of the local music festival b***ered off and left me to carry on running it with a quickly cobbled-together team. I was required to get some electrical extension cables that we would be using at one of the events PAT-tested. While he was testing them, I asked the (very nice, young :D ) electrician to quote me for a complete re-wire of my 50-year old house. I was impressed when he offered to do a £60 wiring check to see if I could get away with just a new fuse board. My son, who is about to embark on a 3-year electrician course suggested it was a waste of money as he would do my re-wire for free when he qualified but with the ensuing mayhem, I forgot to cancel the test. At 5am on Sunday, the fuse board in my son's newly-built housing association flat caught fire, so I was glad I was getting mine checked! Yesterday the electrician had just begun testing my wiring when he found that the incoming mains electricity wasn't earthed. He contacted Eon. Eon came out at 6pm and turned off the power. By 11pm there were 4 crews trying to find the source of the problem. They did a temporary fix and are coming back this morning for more tests. Apparently the implications of having no earth are pretty shocking (!) - none of the domestic fuses would have blown if there was a problem, nor would the circuit-breaker, that I always use for the lawnmower and hedge trimmers, have tripped if I'd accidentally cut the cable. My neighbour's house is similarly affected. He had his house re-wired about 10 years ago, so would not have had reason to get it re-checked. So thank you, Malcolm, for leaving me in the lurch with the festival - you may just have saved my life! (I'm not a qualified electrician, so there may be technical errors in this posting which I'm sure someone will delight in picking me up on, but the end result is the same) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
catinou Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 Glad it worked out for the best Janine. My Mother always said "everything happens for a reason" - it's proved right so far in my life (unless I'm just an optimist?? *-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maggyd Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 Jan even when your Son has finished his time he wont be able to do a re-wire for you, you have to have a special cert; to do home re-wiring, my Son has been an electrician at Corus for 30 years, has just recently re-wired my other Sons house but had to have a friend that has this cert; and does home wiring come and do checks at various stages of the rewire and then he had to pay £80 for the final check and pass cert; It is a bit like Corgi regd; plumbers they need to do this extra course to do home rewires. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CliveH Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 I am no electrical expert either but one thing we were told when we had our wiring checked and a new "trip" fuse board was that periodically we should check that the system is earthed and working by pressing the check button which then trips the main circuit breaker - thus telling you that the whole thing is earthed and OK. Interestingly we were shown this on each of our caravans that we bought and where exactly the same sort of check button is present next to the trip switches. Every time I set up I press the check button after connecting and the main trip flicks down which I then reset knowing that the system is working. I do the same periodically when I go into my garage where the home fuse box is. Good that the salesguys from the two places we bought caravans both showed us this safety feature on the caravans but I had to ask the electrician at my house if the same safety feature applied! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nightrider Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 maggyd - 2009-09-03 4:06 PM Jan even when your Son has finished his time he wont be able to do a re-wire for you, you have to have a special cert; to do home re-wiring, my Son has been an electrician at Corus for 30 years, has just recently re-wired my other Sons house but had to have a friend that has this cert; and does home wiring come and do checks at various stages of the rewire and then he had to pay £80 for the final check and pass cert; It is a bit like Corgi regd; plumbers they need to do this extra course to do home rewires. I am a plumber and heating engineer by trade, my Corgi registration ticket ran out a long time ago, to be caught working on a gas system without a valid ticket can result in one hell of a hefty fine and or prison should there have been an accident. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J9withdogs Posted September 3, 2009 Author Share Posted September 3, 2009 Eon have been here since 10 am and have now dug a very big hole in the road. Power has been off and on all day, but they are confident that it will all be fixed by tomorrow. It must have been pretty serious for this level of action! They've just asked me if I'll be home tomorrow....so that I can keep the cups of coffee coming (lol) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
colin Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 maggyd - 2009-09-03 4:06 PM Jan even when your Son has finished his time he wont be able to do a re-wire for you, you have to have a special cert; to do home re-wiring, my Son has been an electrician at Corus for 30 years, has just recently re-wired my other Sons house but had to have a friend that has this cert; and does home wiring come and do checks at various stages of the rewire and then he had to pay £80 for the final check and pass cert; It is a bit like Corgi regd; plumbers they need to do this extra course to do home rewires. To rewire a house you are required to be competant, to test and issue cert for the rewired house you are required to be qualified. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Momma Posted September 3, 2009 Share Posted September 3, 2009 So with all this spare time on your hands,just sitting around at home, guess the festival planning is nearly complete eh ! :D :D :D :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J9withdogs Posted September 4, 2009 Author Share Posted September 4, 2009 Festival finishes on Sunday. We have certainly had a variety of music genres over the 10 days..church organist on Monday, Folk night on Tuesday and I've just got back from an Electronica gig...nope, I didn't know what Electronica music was either! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
602 Posted September 4, 2009 Share Posted September 4, 2009 Hi, So I bought this old house (£10,000 in 1999), and arranged for some scaffolding. The scaffolders noticed that an overhead power cable was bare, like no insulation. Question, is it live? I walked up the road to phone box (100 yards), spoke to the electricity company, who told me to do nothing until they had checked it. Oh sod! Walking back towards my house I saw that the scaffolding was now above the level of the wire, with the wire passing through it. Ooops! Before I reached my house, the electicity company van drove round the corner, and reached my house before me. Wow! Yes, the wire was live. They replaced it, and similar wires on adjacent houses, and gave one neighbour a new fuse box and consumer unit, all FOC. During my self-build, I managed to dig up a gas pipe. Pity, it had only been there a couple of weeks. :$ The gas company arrived and fixed it. It was less than an hour from the time I phoned them, to their truck driving away. I guess they get a lot of practice? Never received a bill. 602 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maggyd Posted September 4, 2009 Share Posted September 4, 2009 colin - 2009-09-03 7:33 PM maggyd - 2009-09-03 4:06 PM Jan even when your Son has finished his time he wont be able to do a re-wire for you, you have to have a special cert; to do home re-wiring, my Son has been an electrician at Corus for 30 years, has just recently re-wired my other Sons house but had to have a friend that has this cert; and does home wiring come and do checks at various stages of the rewire and then he had to pay £80 for the final check and pass cert; It is a bit like Corgi regd; plumbers they need to do this extra course to do home rewires. To rewire a house you are required to be competant, to test and issue cert for the rewired house you are required to be qualified. (?) Isnt that what I said? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ROON Posted September 4, 2009 Share Posted September 4, 2009 Don't relax too much, Janine. The Gas Board are waiting just around the corner for the electricians to fill the hole in so THEY can then come and dig it up again and do a job on the gas mains..... Next month it could be the Water Board.... Don't think any of them know the meaning of communication. Keep the kettle boiling. :-D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J9withdogs Posted September 4, 2009 Author Share Posted September 4, 2009 Haha...how nearly right you are, Joy! We've had the gas board replacing the pipes around the town for the last 15 months, and they may well have been the cause of my problem. The Eon guys have had to remove some of the stop-cock housings to get to their cables and found that they contained 12 inches of muck, so no hope of turning them off in an emergency! Anyway, the guys have just asked me to do a 'load test' - that somehow involves turning the kettle on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avongas Posted September 9, 2009 Share Posted September 9, 2009 J9withdogs - 2009-09-04 12:12 AM Festival finishes on Sunday. We have certainly had a variety of music genres over the 10 days..church organist on Monday, Folk night on Tuesday and I've just got back from an Electronica gig...nope, I didn't know what Electronica music was either! I do! my eldest son (aka Minotaur Shock) does electronica. Not to everyones taste, but obviously me and the missus think he's great! 3 cd,s and numerous gigs and UK tours to his name! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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