DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD
Bad DIY ‘Electricians’
Regulations broken: BS7671:2008 Reg 411.3.1.2

While chatting with the owner of a local plumbing shop earler this week we were sked if we could sort out a small issue. One of the circuit breakers trips every time they turned on the wall mounted heater. We ha a quick look to see what we could see. YIPES!! We wish we hadn’t looked.

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So down to the cellar we go. The pictures above show the story better than we could ever try to describe it. You will find exposed live and neutral conductors almost everywhere. You’ll also see many uncovered connector blocks dangling from the ceiling. Watch what you back into! As it turns out only one of the consumer units (fuse board) is hooked up and it’s the bottom six way distribution board that is running the entire store upstairs.

Between the  showroom lighting, warehouse lighting, all heating, computers and various other stuff plugged in there is little wonder that breakers are tripping. To further complicate matters we also discovered (surprise, surprise) that the store owner wired everything up by himself. I pointed out a few MAJOR issues as seen in the final two pictures above.

The kitchen extractor display has been wired directly to the 32amp ring circuit with the live, neutral and earth cable pushed through the sharp metal vent slats near the top of the display. At the time this photo was taken we already knew that the earths weren’t hooked up correctly in the cellar. In fact the main bonding runs to the two disused units!

So after finding lots of spurs feeding spurs feeding more spurs amongst the other highlighted issues we’ve recommended starting from scratch with a new larger split consumer unit thus allowing us to break the store up into manageable chunks. Also with all of these live displays being handled and touched by clients all day long it is critical to get it all right the first time.

If you fry someone to death in your home, office or shop and it turns out it’s your fault you’re on the hook. It should be mentioned as well that any insurance policies you have to cover such accidental injuries won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. You’ll lose your business, your savings and perhaps a lot more than that. All of the wiring shown above is probably only a half day to sort out properly. Not as bad as one might think. Certainly cheaper than a solicitor or an undertaker I’d say.

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