Tell us about your faults!

[kung]

Hi ALL
Just thought id put this one up for all those faults we find.
heres one to kick it off !
Domestic RCD tripped and wouldnt reset cause was a blown low energy light bulb.
There you go now for yours !

 

[plugsandsparks]

Kewtech KEW2434 Digital AC 100A Leakage Current clamp 28mm (000631) = £169.00
from ISSWWW, is the one i use, its good for 100A as well.

Anyway had a cracker today, B32 "sockets" tripped wont reset. Got there and its one of 3 "sockets" B32 MCB, managed to determine it was at least Kitchen and utility, disconnected the lot but still not resetting. Client things the garage may be also on the ring but cannot get in as its electric door and not responding to the remote fob. Managed to get half my body through a small window and switch off two plugs plugged into a double socket.
Went for another reset thinking "no such luck" and it held, yippee
Garage door opened and i could get inside and............ found a 3KW convector heater plugged into an extension reel (reel was fully wound in).
Well pulled out the cable from the reel and after about half way gave up. Pulled the reel apart and found the inner half of the cable was a solid mass of plastic.
Reel rating fully wound in 750W, fully unwound 2300W, convector heater on max setting at 3000W . Nice, lucky no fie on this one and 10A fuse in the plug head still happy.....
Think reels should be banned, GP just dont understand how they MUST be used despite a small warning label on them

 

[Engineer54]

Think reels should be banned, GP just dont understand how they MUST be used despite a small warning label on them

Are you bonkers or what?? If anything, it should be all the half wits that should be banned from buying them!!

 

[GLENNSPARK]

Are you bonkers or what?? If anything, it should be all the half wits that should be banned from buying them!!

went to a place this one time...old lady on her death bed..
so, takes a look round...there were loads of daisy chained extension leads all over the place feeding heaters...they were all coming off 2 points....lol..
there was one that was being `back fed`...lol..disconnected that one for em straight away.....it`d been like that for ages ant they were just totally oblivious to the danger...
this is how it is with the general public...they simply dont get it....

 

[plugsandsparks]

Are you bonkers or what?? If anything, it should be all the half wits that should be banned from buying them!!

Dont think so but who knows, fed up coming across them used incorrectly, must have removed a dozen in the last few years on PAT alone. They look so perfect all nice and neat and so attactive to the un-initiated. Ban them, ban them alll

 

[chcnorris29]

One today:
Some one moved a stat on a house just been re-wired. After the move it does not work and goes bang.
How many sparks to find the fault 1 but 3 come before and see no problem.
Problem:
Cable in back box clearly goes up the wall so it make sense to drill a fixing in to the cable to fix the stat to the wall.

 

[lefty10]

Had a good one last week. "Smoke Alarms wont stop beeping" - MCB switched off, batteries out - Still Beeping, two of us looking everywhere. After a good hour narrowed it down to the back of a fridge, cleared all of the rubbish out of the cooling fins to find a nice wee battery CO alarm at the bottom, merrily beeping away.

 

[Stroppy]

That reminds me of a customers 'ticking socket' with nothing plugged in. Turned out to be a clock in a poly bag on the worktop under a load of papers!

 

[zeljuga]

Fresh idea for Gas meter bonding

 

[onions1066]

Fresh idea for Gas meter bondingView attachment 18706

That's straight out the 18th edition

 

[GLENNSPARK]

That reminds me of a customers 'ticking socket' with nothing plugged in. Turned out to be a clock in a poly bag on the worktop under a load of papers!

somebody may have dropped a `bomb` in there....

 

[Stroppy]

Heheh, I 'dropped the bomb' in a customers house during the week (after Wednesday night's curry club), then they unexpectedly returned at lunchtime. My, it ponged...

This was the same place where in the loft I found a bulge in the fibreglass insulation which covered a melted plastic flower pot on top of an old spotlight. That did its job, then...

 

[STONEZZZ]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

Central heating programmer tripping main 30ma R.C.D

 

[Outspoken]

I could list all my faults, but perhaps I should just give you the ex-wife's phone number as I am sure she has them written down somewhere

 

[Andy78]

Had a good un the other day. Tracing a fault on a socket ring, we were belling each leg out, line to cpc, to determine which cable went where. One piece only had continuity when my mate bounced up and down on the floor a metre away from the socket. Cable had been trapped between the floor board and a hot pipe.


After a few more faults were found and fixed, I connected into the new CU I had fitted after refusing to connect into this lash-up of a board that was in originally.



It did have a cover, but all the breakers were held in by the busbar connection alone. They were just flapping about with no way to hold them in apart from the cover.
In the second picture you can see the busbar hacked to fit into the terminal, and the piece of degraded plastic strip, no more than 0.5mm thick that separated the neutral bar from touching the busbar.

 

[Graeme Harrold]

After hunting down a lighting neutral fault, it was traced back to the CU....joy of joys when I opened it up....

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6jhnmryuqag2jt/2013-04-25%2010.40.55.jpg

 

[Outspoken]

After hunting down a lighting neutral fault, it was traced back to the CU....joy of joys when I opened it up....

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o6jhnmryuqag2jt/2013-04-25%2010.40.55.jpg

Don't you just love those really professional installs!!

 

[Graeme Harrold]

And it was a professional install by a large local contractor. Its like the guy pulled the odds and ends from the bottom of his box and threw them in, closed the lid and hoped for the best. This was only done 3 years ago, uncertified and blatantly dangerous......Still got to find where the 6mm cooker is joined to the 2.5!!!

 

[mselect]

Re: Tell us about your faults !

I got called to a house to rectify a cooker circuit that had tripped and stopped working. Traced the fault all the way back to inside to cooker only to find an electrocuted mouse between live and earth.........nice!

Believe it or not...This is quite a common one!

 

[Thefailsafe2012]

Only a minor one, testing a small proteus cu. the RCD wasn't tripping on the tests, so checked the test button on the front. Out of some form of instinct I opted to use my flat screwdriver as opposed to my finger. And boy was I glad when instead of tripping like it should, it went bang and filled the air with putrid smoke! Ugh! It'd been tested a year before and couldn't have been older than 3 years!

 

[Kate]

I've had that instinct loads...I call it my 'lucky' ! Maybe it's a sparky thing?? I had it just this morning!!