Welcome to another episode of “my house was wired by a clown”

NoobCannon · 14 Jun 2019 at 18:53

Honestly never seen anything this bad.

Am up in the loft to replace the downlighters and fix the ceiling in the on suite and this is what i find buried under the insulation.

And yes they were all the same.

xb8browney · 14 Jun 2019 at 18:54

Nasty, hopefully someone didn't pay for that work.

d_brennen · 14 Jun 2019 at 18:54

He's used way too much electrical tape the noob. The electrons get stuck to it, you know

xb8browney · 14 Jun 2019 at 18:55

Nasty, hopefully someone didn't pay for that work.

Rroff · 14 Jun 2019 at 18:56

It is amazing what you find in some houses.

The one that has got me in our new house is the telephone wiring - seemingly no master socket, cable criss-crosses the entire length of the loft 3x for no apparent reason, then goes into the house where there are multiple places where terminal strips have been used to join them badly with some taped splices, atleast 4 different types and gauges of cable - some of them not really suited to telephone wiring, and random extensions chained off random extensions.

DXP55 · 14 Jun 2019 at 22:04

OP - You should treat yourself to a new pair of cutters -

NoobCannon · 14 Jun 2019 at 22:40

DXP55 said:
OP - You should treat yourself to a new pair of cutters -

My cutters are fine. Im a working electrician so my tools get dirty.

Adam_151 · 15 Jun 2019 at 08:48

NoobCannon said:
My cutters are fine. Im a working electrician so my tools get dirty.

Might just be the picture, but they look old/worn/dull rather than just dirty

Not supprised by poorly conencted downlights.... they are one of the easiest points to get on EICR Bingo

Just a few from the EICR archives, all were found in commericial / industrial sites: https://imgur.com/a/vpkWRHW

NoobCannon · 15 Jun 2019 at 09:03

Some of those are quite terrible

Especially the ones bypassing the isolators.

Terminal_Boy · 15 Jun 2019 at 09:30

That would be terrible if it was 12V DC car wiring. As it’s 240V AC in a house, whomever did that should be jailed.

DXP55 · 15 Jun 2019 at 14:46

The best I have seen was at a collage - the handyman showed me a box of things he had replaced and to me the neatest one was a 13a plug - The student had stripped all three wires down to the clamp - then twisted the wires as tight as he could then carefully bent then round the plug to the terminals making sure none touched- it was a work of art to be honest.

divuk83 · 15 Jun 2019 at 16:14

The cables loop and twist all over and they have used quite a bit of tape, some time and effort has gone into that! Very impressive.

I'm no electrician, but I know roughly what I expect wiring to be when I remove switches, sockets and lights. It's disappointingly rare to find what you expect to see when doing anything in my house!

Dave

Rroff · 15 Jun 2019 at 16:35

Adam_151 said:
Just a few from the EICR archives, all were found in commericial / industrial sites: https://imgur.com/a/vpkWRHW

I went to school with the owner of a local electrician (ABM 4 Electrical Limited) some of the pictures he has shared of what they found before they rectified it after turning up to customer's premises are quite horrifying - worse even than a lot of that stuff.

NoobCannon · 16 Jun 2019 at 22:06

To add further insult to injury, whilst continuing to tidy all the wiring and junction boxes found under the insulation in my loft ive worked my way back to the extractor fan located above the shower cubicle (zone 1) and found that the guy has fitted a 240v extractor fan directly above the shower.

Dread to think what im going to find when i get to the other bathroom. The kitchens also been done recently and its quite worrying what is hidden under the floor boards with regards just to the lighting! Im not sure if its worth a “fix it when it breaks approach” or to make a huge mess checking stuff.

jimjamuk · 17 Jun 2019 at 09:53

I guess its a balance of trying to guess if its potentially dangerous enough to go fishing under the floorboards to track it all down given what you have already found

Terminal_Boy · 17 Jun 2019 at 10:09

Even when you think everything’s switched off, use one of those current probes to check.

Having power distributed across 3 buildings with 6 fuse/breaker boxes which were installed as the outbuilding were converted over a 20 year period is fun as you’re never quite sure if the circuit you’re looking at is isolated locally or in another building.

BigDannyO · 17 Jun 2019 at 10:42

Here's one from a hospital. There should only be eight radials of alarm cable using two cores each, instead we've got some horror show of cat5 spliced into choccy block. See also the melted cables from a corrosive spill further up the riser, random cable coiled up behind the PSU, hand-written instructions on a sticker for how to reset it when it dies, and a nearly empty packet of fuses for when they inevitably blow!

psd99 · 17 Jun 2019 at 12:19

what should they have done then?

use a junction box or those white connectors?

BigDannyO · 17 Jun 2019 at 12:36

There are four outputs on both of those cream boxes at the bottom, cables from those should just run off up the riser. The adaptable box in the middle is a result of some Grade A bodging.

Not to mention, wiring in solid core instead of stranded means that as soon as you tighten the screw down terminals used on ALL the devices on the system you break the core. :rolleyes:

Jez · 17 Jun 2019 at 14:11

NoobCannon said:
To add further insult to injury, whilst continuing to tidy all the wiring and junction boxes found under the insulation in my loft ive worked my way back to the extractor fan located above the shower cubicle (zone 1) and found that the guy has fitted a 240v extractor fan directly above the shower.

Dread to think what im going to find when i get to the other bathroom. The kitchens also been done recently and its quite worrying what is hidden under the floor boards with regards just to the lighting! Im not sure if its worth a “fix it when it breaks approach” or to make a huge mess checking stuff.

How is an extractor above a shower an issue? It sounds to me as though you are just looking for things to criticize to be honest!