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I've just got back from my niece's first home, the heating is a mix of single and twin pipe no wonder it's not warm, the tank above the cylinder has been replaced but the open vent is 4 inch away from the edge of the tank and the overflow is a length of hose under the floor board's terminating in the garage. I am going to rip the lot out and start again. 

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My sister bought a nice old cottage in quite a nice rural location, it had a huge workshop that you could easily park a bus in. At one end was a large electrical box with a large switch, the sort you get on big industrial machines. Anyway it turns out that the previous owner had been pinching the electricity from the main power cable. At the end of the workshop there was a telegraph pole carrying power to a transformer, he had wired into that. The large switch type box in the workshop was a power reducer. no idea of the tecky terms, this was used whenever he decided he had run up enough of a bill. The electricity board came round to sort it out, no idea what happened to the chap.

Another thing was using garden hose pipe to plumb in a gas cooker under a kitchen floor.

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3 hours ago, Wiggum said:

My wife’s best friend had just bought her 1st house and asked if I could check over the electrics for her, I found this doozie in the loft. Apparently you don’t need the cpc connecting. 

E18EB06B-C8DE-459F-8F16-A87A7455D108.jpeg

7FB245BE-897A-448E-9193-94CE53983DD3.jpeg

Earth wires are for poofs....vastly overrated😂

Those GU10 downlights don't comply with BS7671 (wiring regs ) in the way they are connected either

 

fairly common level of ineptitude/roughness

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On 29/03/2019 at 18:32, The Mighty Prawn said:

My house is an old nailers cottage so the build quality was never great, when we took down one of the ceilings downstairs we found one of the joists was a couple of inches shorter than the rest and was sitting on a lump of rock jammed onto the wall like a Flinstone hanger - left it in as couldn't swap out the joist without much work and if it held for a century so far it's probably okay!

So he made a corbel and a good one too it's lasted a century and still going. Perfectly good way of hanging joists.

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This is a good one, needed some floodlights connecting up and this is the job the professional sparks did, 

IMG-5973.jpg

IMG-5972.jpg

the dusk till dawn sensor was wired in a interesting way!

IMG-5971.jpg

 

i also dug up a old cable on this job and it had exposed ends buried in a steel tube and when tested it was still live.

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2 minutes ago, rovercoupe said:

This is a good one, needed some floodlights connecting up and this is the job the professional sparks did, 

IMG-5973.jpg

IMG-5972.jpg

the dusk till dawn sensor was wired in a interesting way!

IMG-5971.jpg

 

i also dug up a old cable on this job and it had exposed ends buried in a steel tube and when tested it was still live.

What wizardry is this?   Silver gaffer tape!   Everybody knows it's black gaffer tape for 230V and Silver for 415V

 

polyethylene connector strip, nice!

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8 hours ago, Dougy said:

My sister bought a nice old cottage in quite a nice rural location, it had a huge workshop that you could easily park a bus in. At one end was a large electrical box with a large switch, the sort you get on big industrial machines. Anyway it turns out that the previous owner had been pinching the electricity from the main power cable. At the end of the workshop there was a telegraph pole carrying power to a transformer, he had wired into that. The large switch type box in the workshop was a power reducer. no idea of the tecky terms, this was used whenever he decided he had run up enough of a bill. The electricity board came round to sort it out, no idea what happened to the chap.

Another thing was using garden hose pipe to plumb in a gas cooker under a kitchen floor.

Blimey, that is a little too dodgey!

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7 minutes ago, figgy said:

It wasn't that long ago if you had a gas leak below a certain level on old pipework it didn't need finding and dealing with. Don't think it's still the case now.

 

Still is provided there's no smell of gas 

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Saw a guy plaster boarding a ceiling and he was leaving nails poking out a couple of mm so as not to damage paper.

Customer had been using a 50m extension cable almost fully wound and melted together.

Lintel bearing of 30mm and brick it was almost bearing on had been shattered by window fitter.

Stair stringers held up with one 4" wire nail.

I had 3 accidents on site last year,stepped off a decking and twisted my ankle ripping ligaments off,the other 2 were both from hop up falling through floor boards nailed with traps left,ie no support.

3" deep cut out in joists by diy plumber.

ground floor socket wired to 1st floor circuit,see this sort of thing a lot.

Doors hung upside down and even hinges on light switch side.

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On 30/03/2019 at 21:06, Diver One said:

Earth wires are for poofs....vastly overrated😂

Those GU10 downlights don't comply with BS7671 (wiring regs ) in the way they are connected either

 

fairly common level of ineptitude/roughness

I ended up re-terminating them all and replaced all of the fittings with fire rated led fittings as I found the connections to be over heating due to a combination of loose/poor connections and them being buried under the insulation next to the GU10 lamps

A0C67E7F-B528-42E3-AE6A-29ABD4B44B1F.jpeg

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42 minutes ago, vampire said:

ground floor socket wired to 1st floor circuit,see this sort of thing a lo

Quite often see this....usually with solid ground floor. House is wired front/back  as opposed to up/down. Nothing wrong with it...just a bit confusing the first time you see it. Seen a few people caught out when they have killed a circuit....downstairs sockets dead BUT only half of them

Told to me when I was apprentice in the 70s

Rule number 1....treat everything as though it's live even when you know it's dead, because one day it WILL be live, and burning flesh smells worse when it's your own

Rule number 2...never touch anything with bare hands that hasn't first been touched with your testers (PROPER TESTERS)

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Ten Commandments of Electrical Safety

(1) Beware of the lightning that lurks in an undischarged capacitor lest it cause thee to be bounced upon thy backside in a most ungainly manner.

(2) Cause thou the switch that supplies large quantities of juice to be opened and thusly tagged, so thy days may be long on this earthly vale of tears.

(3) Prove to thyself that all circuits that radiateth and upon which thou worketh are grounded lest they lift thee to high-frequency potential and cause thee to radiate also.

(4) Take care thou useth the proper method when thou taketh the measure of high-voltage circuits so that thou doth not incinerate both thee and the meter, for verily though thou hast no account number and can be easily replaced, the meter doth have one and as a consequence bringeth much woe upon the supply department.

(5)Tarry thee not amongst those who engage in intentional shocks for they are surely non-believers and are not long for this world.

(6) Take care thou tampereth not with interlocks and safety devices, for this incureth the wrath of thy seniors and bringeth the fury of the safety officer down upon thy head and shoulders.

(7) Work thee not on energized equipment, for if thou doeth, thy mates will surely be buying lunch without thee and thy space at the table will be filled by another.

(8) Verily, verily I say unto thee, never service high-voltage equipment alone, for electric cooking is a slothful process, and thou might sizzle in thy own fat for hours on end before thy Maker sees fit to end thy misery and drag thee into His fold.

(9) Trifle thee not with radioactive tubes and substances lest thou commence to glow in the dark like a lightning bug.

(10) Commit thee to memory the works of the prophets, which are written in the instruction books, which giveth the straight info and which consoleth thee, and thou cannot make mistakes.

-From Orbit, the Journal of the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, Didcot, England (31 January 1965) p.12

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On ‎31‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 20:32, figgy said:

When people say hose pipe was used on gas, was it flexible rubber gas pipe like off a butane or propane bottle.  Not right way to do it but natural gas is next to no pressure in a dwelling.

Friend of mine, a retired copper, now works for the gas company fraud team and he is a very interesting person  to sit down with and listen to all his stories

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I was a Building Society Surveyor for30 years and saw many horrors.

The Funniest.

The owner was very proud of his new lounge extension, but the ceiling and walls were covered with vinyl panels and the windows looked oddly familiar - yes, the owner had merely bolted a static caravan to the rear of his house!

The Bad.

I have lost count of the number of times,  owners have proudly shown me their loft conversion and are somewhat surprised when I tell them that the W’s in the preformed roof trusses are there for a reason and shouldn’t just be removed. A very expensive mistake, making a house virtually unsaleable/mortgageable.

The Mad.

This was the guy who proudly showed me his cellar extension, achieved by digging out the subfloor to  void to front room to a depth of 6 ft. The footings were now at eye level with no support!!! 

I shot out of the house and immediately called building control - so he complained to his MP. The MP critized me until I explained the laws of gravity......

Keep them coming.

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On ‎01‎/‎04‎/‎2019 at 00:44, victorismyhero said:

(7) Work thee not on energized equipment, for if thou doeth, thy mates will surely be buying lunch without thee and thy space at the table will be filled by another.

How dost thou findeth the fault, if thy is not permitted to worketh on energised equipment?

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