I am at a customers to do a consumer unit swap amongst other bits and bobs and its one of those jobs where you end up fault finding and rectifying before you even strike a blow.

Well, fitting some replacement outside security lights to existing feeds off the lighting circuit, I was baffled to find that flipping the breaker at the board for both lighting circuits the feeds to the security lights were still live. Just so happens after digging around that in the loft, some bright spark has connected a 1.5mm T+E into a ceiling rose, fitted a plug to the other end and plugged it in to the ring circuit.

I quickly removed this and found the reason they had done this was because they had a broken neutral in the lighting circuit. Rather than find and fix this, they just tapped into the ring.

 

Thankfully you found it, rather than it found you...
I'll bet some choice words were spoken

 

At least they used 1.5mm T+E as its usually .75 flex........

 

The other beauty found in the same property is the armoured feed going out to the garage in this JB in the loft. Guess what they did with the armour.

 

Gee, let me think ...
But it's ok there's secret warning red tape on the box

 

I know I was wondering what the significance of that was. Perhaps its to warn you that it gets hot when you are welding in the garage. The armoured feeds a sub board in the garage.

This is the same JB that is giving me 47Ω R1+R2 at a socket which is spurred off from it. Loose connections and cables screwed down on their insulation...

Where to start

 

I'm guessing the two grey cables may be the original ring, if so that's 3 spurs from there including the garage.