V
Vitesse
Hi All,
Newbie poster here, so treat me gently. I have been a domestic spark for about 5 years fully qualified and registered etc....
I tend to read posts on here rather than post questions myself as I tend to find from the great wealth of knowledge and experience on here I can generally find the answers to a lot of questions.
I got asked to go to a house last week as the owner was convinced they could smell electrical burning at times in the bathroom. So using the rule of thought, look at the obvious first, what's drawing the highest current in the bathroom? The power shower was my first thought. It was a single story extension with a roof void, so I climbed up there and found a 10mm twin and earth feeding the shower followed it back along to where it entered from the main part of the house.
Halfway along I found a very charred choc block sitting in insulation that had been used to join the cable together. Isolated the circuit at the consumer unit etc.. Cut out the offending article and replaced it with a 60 amp JB. Carried out all the appropriate testing on the circuit all good.
Closer inspection of the choc block showed it was 10 amp, a fire waiting to happen!!!!! Fortunately I guess it was on a circuit that is only used for a short time each day. One very relieved house holder when I showed them the evidence and pointed out the possible end result.
My question is why did the neutral insulation melt to virtually nothing rather than the live? The live was fine, there wasn't much left of the choc block on the neutral side, just a big blob of plastic. My only reasonable assumption is that the neutral wasn't terminated very well inside the choc block in comparison to the live and was causing arcing that generated the heat?
Fortunately for the house holder I think the reason they managed to smell the burning was due to the fact that they had a vent in the ceiling pretty close to the joint in question that was put into allow condensation to go into the roof space. I did point out that wasn't really a good idea to allow all that damp up there, so I did get some extra work to fit a proper extractor and venting. Which then led to a consumer unit change and loads of other bits. I think they were happy with me for preventing their house from burning down!
Newbie poster here, so treat me gently. I have been a domestic spark for about 5 years fully qualified and registered etc....
I tend to read posts on here rather than post questions myself as I tend to find from the great wealth of knowledge and experience on here I can generally find the answers to a lot of questions.
I got asked to go to a house last week as the owner was convinced they could smell electrical burning at times in the bathroom. So using the rule of thought, look at the obvious first, what's drawing the highest current in the bathroom? The power shower was my first thought. It was a single story extension with a roof void, so I climbed up there and found a 10mm twin and earth feeding the shower followed it back along to where it entered from the main part of the house.
Halfway along I found a very charred choc block sitting in insulation that had been used to join the cable together. Isolated the circuit at the consumer unit etc.. Cut out the offending article and replaced it with a 60 amp JB. Carried out all the appropriate testing on the circuit all good.
Closer inspection of the choc block showed it was 10 amp, a fire waiting to happen!!!!! Fortunately I guess it was on a circuit that is only used for a short time each day. One very relieved house holder when I showed them the evidence and pointed out the possible end result.
My question is why did the neutral insulation melt to virtually nothing rather than the live? The live was fine, there wasn't much left of the choc block on the neutral side, just a big blob of plastic. My only reasonable assumption is that the neutral wasn't terminated very well inside the choc block in comparison to the live and was causing arcing that generated the heat?
Fortunately for the house holder I think the reason they managed to smell the burning was due to the fact that they had a vent in the ceiling pretty close to the joint in question that was put into allow condensation to go into the roof space. I did point out that wasn't really a good idea to allow all that damp up there, so I did get some extra work to fit a proper extractor and venting. Which then led to a consumer unit change and loads of other bits. I think they were happy with me for preventing their house from burning down!
