Superb video, thank you for posting. The original lead sheathed cable runs were so beautifully installed. It’s amazing how much more pride tradesmen took in their work 100 years ago.
Looks perfectly normal in an old house to me ! When I cleared my Dad’s flat I found the fuse box had been one of the old wooden ones, the woodworm had eaten all of it so live brass was projecting into the cupboard ! Again, not a surprise, I’ve seen it before …
Your mileage must vary from mine! I just this afternoon pulled up a floorboard (simply to check for pipes before screwing down some creaky boards) and right underneath was some old lead-sheathed cable, presumably as old as the house (about 1935), installed at the most random angles, very poorly supported, and with a twisted-together joint in the middle of it. Obviously Captain Bodge was pretty active in the 1930s.
The storage heater story made me laugh as it was exactly what we did as soon as we moved into our cottage. The storage heater wiring was like something out of a 70's Dr Who set. I sent the steel boxes for scrap and am using the bricks for lots of projects. They're really nice, a pleasant burgundy colour. Unfortunately I no longer allow 'qualified electricians' into my house. Two very bad experiences with appalling standards of workmanship have totalled my trust in them. Twenty years working in theatre and the music industry including designing and installing the cabling in lighting grids etc I think adequately qualifies me to make an infinity better job as I really care about my own house both safety wise and usability wise. All service header fuses say 100A on them regardless of the value of the cartridge. Really interesting video, thanks.
Andy, this is a very good piece of content. My father in law was an electrician and I did lots with him over the years but I know my limitations. I have just moved into a 2003 build house where lighting junctions are in the switch boxes not the ceiling roses so I will seek competent help if I need to. I was dealing with my daughter's house some years back and found one power socket run off the 6mm supply to the power shower. There were other howlers in that house as well but we stripped it all out for a full rewire. My work passed the full inspection so I was pleased but my electrician did the final connections and testing. Fortunately I have a trusted electrician who I am happy to pay to do work now.
Hi Andy, I have solar panels here in Whitley Bay. We have had them for approx 6 years and usually make around £500 per year. Our energy provider pays money directly into our account every quarter. (On 2nd August we received £31.00 deemed payment and £179 Generation payment).They cost us £4.400 to install and the company estimated that it would take roughly 6-7 years to break even. We live in a bungalow and the rear of the property is South facing 😁 which is good, as according to the installation company, orientation is everything ! So they can be profitable, but obviously if your property is not in a good position, then you are wasting your time. It's amazing what you can find when renovating old property! When you see some of the bodge ups (especially with electrics) it's amazing there are not more house fires! Another great vid. Keep them coming😁👍
Another great interesting video, thank you. I used to work for an ISP and the one thing that stood out for me was a damaged network cable with the twisted pairs held together by sellotape. I mean it wasn't even electrical tape!! The EMI in a domestic setting is far less of a risk than in industrial, so power and network run alongside in my house too, with no issues.
In Australia, Lines are red, white and blue, while neutral is black. Flexible cables are brown for live and blue for neutral. In appliances, all other colours can be used except for yellow and green or a combination of those two.
very interesting -- thank you! I imagine every old house has a fire-hazard hidden in the walls or floors - mine did. I opened a wall one day and found a loose connection (no junction box) arcing and sparking, and sitting in a pile of ancient wood shavings.
So someone's probably already commented on this (probably with a lot of 'boo, EU, evil' noise), we switched to the brown and blue (brown black grey, blue, green/yellow, to be specific) to harmonise with the EU (other members also had various other schemes prior to this), and the primary reason is to ensure conductors can be distinguished by the colour blind. Specifically the striped CPC (earth, ground..) is highly identifiable even with full colour blindness, however unlike the prior scheme, all phases and neutral can be distinguished with any form of single colour blindness. Now, we did switch the CPC to striped in.. the late 70s, I believe, but it was later decided to harmonise fully because, honestly, it makes more sense than everyone having different schemes, and is slightly better in terms of colour blindness.
1977 for Green > Green/Yellow CPC, 2004 for Harmonization but that wasn't down to colour blindness. If was for consistency across the block so everyone at the same nominal voltage could work in any of the countries in the block without having to retrain. Though in practice the wiring standards and styles are so different across the block it has lead to some horrendous installs.
@@effervescence5664 Yes, I may have expressed that poorly. The reason for the colour scheme is that it's about as good as you get for colour blindness. The reason we switched to it was to harmonize. The major safety concern is the CPC colour, which was already resolved.
@@Monkeh616 Don't worry about it, I used to have to read through peoples answers to those exact questions. I just try to impart the relevant information as best as possible, but yes the safety concern was addressed in 1977, though having a colour blind friend when I first did my apprenticeship I can tell you no matter what the colours are if they're colour blind on the wrong spectrum it still goes bang after they've wired it up.
@@GosforthHandyman Majority of the wider Cenelec membership didn't come in until 2014, though appliance harmonization came into being in 1996 with plug top harmonization around 1978.
I don't think anyone else has mentioned it, so to answer your question Andy: RCD - Residual Current Device - cuts the power if it detects an imbalance between the current flowing down the line and neutral. This would happen if there was a leakage to earth via maybe a damp connection, or perhaps a person! They're usually set to 30mA in domestic installations, which is likely to be low enough to avoid death but high enough to avoid nuisance trips. MCB - Miniature Circuit Breaker - cuts the power if the current exceeds the rating. Think of it as an electronic fuse. RCBO - Residual Circuit Breaker with Overcurrent protection - basically an MCB and RCD in one box.
Really good explanation Andy , bloody horrific that . Someone needed a good ticking off . Shoddy workmanship hacks me off . As someone who spent 35 years in construction . I have seen things that would make us weep .
The worst I ever came across was in a loft - wires simply twisted together with a bit of tape wrapped over each connection, with the whole lot stuffed into a brown paper bag. Thirty years later I still have trouble believing that it really was like that.
@@ianbird4737 That’s horrendous Ian , worst I ever see not electrics, was a glue lam beam was to short to sit on the supporting walls either side . So the foreman glued and screwed a scaffold plank either end .This was a school gym . Was told to mind my own business when I told him he cannot do that 🤨
22:00 How could the bathroom storage heater be off the socket ring - it would have been on all the time as it wouldn’t have passed via the off-peak contactor?
The switch from red + black to brown and blue was to bring us in line with the same colours the EU were using I believe - They wanted to make it consistent all round the EU so everyone knew which cables were which
law say all europe EU need cable colour have brown ,=hot wire, blue =neutral, green/yellow or green wire =GROUND and need be connected ewery metal junctiuon box and metal covered engine,machine,motor, ewerythin need be ground, this have law and rules if inspector see other colour today have fail and not accept this house not newer anybody can move live if not has change all wire right colours. and ewery handyman not newer can do elektric work, need be 3 year school and 2 year work and then examine and certification then can make elektric work all around EU area same law.
I rented a flat in Turkey and the electrical work there was frightening. There was one socket with the earth wired to live, I got a shock off that. Another socket didn't work, when I checked none of the wires had been connected to the socket. When we bought an electric shower the guy who fitted it found the wires it needed to be connected to, removed insulation, he then put on washing up gloves and twisted the wires together. He didn't disconnect the power whilst doing this.
regarding data cabling, in this country it is regulated to be separate from power, to make it safer as a decorator/renovator will not be able to bang a nail into a wall and join comms wires to a live electric wire and create a dangerous situation for comms workers. no one in a data centre will be hanging any pictures on the walls.
We used to have electrics like that and the best part about it was they were put in by Yorkshire Electricity. Everytime we had something new they would add another metal box to the power supply. We ended up with a wall in the larder that looked like Battersea Power Station. Thankfully my nephew is an electrician and we now have an electrical system that is both efficient and neat and tidy.
Looking at the photo of the old CU, the neutral bar appears to be fed from the *supply* side of the switch, meaning there was no double-pole isolation, just isolation of the line conductor. Also, - my god - I've never seen so many wires jammed in the top of a main switch before :o
Normally while, or also gray, white w/color stripe for neutral, normally black or red (or other), green grounding, for 120/240vac residential. In our area metal conduit is required for residential electric. Accepted commercial 3 phase 120/208/230 black ,red, and blue, 277/480 brown, orange, yellow, but not required by national electric code
@@GosforthHandyman construction differences is part of what makes it very interesting IE: 99% of our walls are wood stud construction even most brick houses are a brick veneer. But last 100’s years
Back in the early 1980's, I knew a guy who was apprentice trained with The London Electricity Board (LEB). He passed all his exams and qualifications and was personally NICEIC certified. He told me that his LEB training had even included 3-phase wiring for industrial applications, working on switchgear in power stations and outside power installations "up poles and on pylons". He said to me that you must respect electricity because: You can't see it, You can't hear it, You can't smell it. So always switch off/disconnect/isolate and test for current before working on wiring. Thank you for your uploads Gosforth Handyman. Stay safe and well.
@@RichardFarmbrough The guy in charge of electrical on a small hydro plant had a drinking problem. I put my own lock on the breaker for the circuit I was working on. This guy in charge comes along and starts trying keys in my lock.
MCB's protect against overloads and short circuits therefore protecting the cables & equipment attached to the cables. An RCD protects against an imbalance between the supply current & return current. This might happen if you were touching a live part & the current was "returning" through you to ground. Therefore protecting the consumer. An RCD won't protect against overcurrent or all types of short circuits. An RCBO does the work of both a MCB & RCB in one unit. Brilliant video btw.
Good explanation. The reason for the switch is to totally disconnect the supply for safety reasons. The last thing you want is the mains going off and the solar pumping power back in to the grid and then running through transformers.
20:25 wow that's some shocking electrics you have there. Looking forward to the renovation of your home. Its going to be great with a before and after comparison.
Very interesting , some times it can say on the incoming supply carrier 100 ams but this is more to do with the rating of the carrier not necessarily the fuse size it contains. A point of interest regards to dis board blanks they now should be the type that clip over the bus bar . Also the supply going to the outside studio is possibly not compliant with current regulations if the earth is not separated from the house , via the use of an earth spike and a main RCD mounted within the studio . The electrical regulations change so fast these days and keeping on board with the latest dictate is a minefield , and even then they can often be open to interpretation and will generate much debate among electrical contractors . Very glad I’m retired and free from all the hassle . Best wishes and kind regards as always 😀👍👍👍
@3:39 Here in The Great Industrial Northeast across the pond, 110/120v electric is black = hot, white = neutral, and bare copper = ground. 220v has the addition of one extra wire that is hot and it is red. 12v is a different story. It can be one of two ways. Black = hot and white = neutral OR Red = hot and black = neutral. Many people get easily confused with 12v wiring. The trade off is it's not usually deadly if you make a mistake.
@@GosforthHandyman I believe from what I've read, the voltage had changed over there in the UK and is now 230V but used to be 220V and also maybe it was also 240V for some time. Here in the US it had been 110/220V years ago but was standardized to a nominal 120/240V. Some people forget that it isn't just 120V here, but 120/240VAC 60Hz Single Phase.
@@GosforthHandyman fun story. The UK has been 240V for yonks (although loosely regulated) and much of Europe 220V. The EU commission decided that we should all harmonise at a single voltage, so 230V was decided. How to achieve that without everyone rewinding all their generators and throwing away all their equipment? Simple; the UK is now 230V -6% +10% and the EU is 230V -10% +6%. So nothing changed but we’re all now the same! So you’re likely to find 240V actually coming out of your sockets but anywhere within the permitted range is possible.
Interesting video thanks for sharing An RCD will only trip if there's an earth leakage fault, so a bulb blowing shouldn't cause this to trip but may cause your MCB to trip hope that makes sense.
Loving the series Andy - thank you for taking the time to detail what you're doing! I found some dodgy wiring in my last house; the neighbour's ex husband (only ever referred to as 'that ar*ehole') was a qualified spark. He had installed a couple of additional sockets in one of the bedrooms - I was initially impressed to find that the ring had been extended properly, with a spur also running off the first new socket to the second, however when I started to look closer he had run a single length of T&E from the ring to the first socket with an additional single piece of wire. The earth was carrying current (scary as the earth in 2.5mm T&E has a smaller sectional area than Live & Neutral!) and there was no earth protection whatsoever on the circuit. I know that it's unlikely to be sucking a huge current draw in that location but being a children's bedroom at the time the consequences didn't bear thinking about. The fact that he was a qualified professional means he knew the risks he was taking with other people's lives. I ripped it all out to find that no sheathing/conduit had been used in the chase either. Our kitchen electrics had been 'blessed' by the same genius previously too - good luck finding an earth signal on half of those sockets! I like to do my own work when it comes to electrics in the house but always get it commissioned by a trusted and qualified pro!
My kitchen was full of ungrounded outlets that previous owners had added. For most of them, I could dig out enough ground connections to fix them, but for one, the only way to make it safer was to run a green wire to a clamp on the pipe for the washing machine.
And I thought thing were bad here in the US.... you definitely had your hands full with that mess! good thing you're rewiring the house... lots of fire traps. could you imagine the in floor splice that was wrapped blowing out and starting a fire... scary! even here in N.A. (USA) stuff like that's totally illegal!
@8:15 That's exactly why residential solar technology has not caught on in the US. The payback for the cost is somewhere in the 20-30 year range. Most people don't keep their homes that long. Besides if the payback of a large project is more than 7-8 years, it generally isn't worth the investment.
You can't really lump the whole US as one, the returns in Alaska would be completely different to those in Cali, Arizona, etc. I've seen people in sunny states have a payback period of 5-6 years which, IMO, is well worth it financially, before you even consider the environment impact.
If every new house had the whole roof covered in solar panels it would help the uk/world be greener and .Iv never got why they only fit them on the southern facing roof as they use Uv rays to produce electricity so a whole roof would produce more then a just on a south facing roof
@bmwman1981 Smart solar panels are computer controlled to not only angle towards the sun throughout the day but also the seasons to maximize solar density on the panels.
Light bulbs mainly tripped MCBs because they sometimes short out when they blow. The reasoning behind putting the lighting on the non-RCD side was mainly to keep the lights on even if something plugged into a socket tripped the RCD. Electricians can be a bit paranoid and many didn't install RCDs unless they were absolutely required to, which is why split-load CUs were a thing. On what's known as a TT system (the earths are only connected to a rod outside) you've had whole-house RCD protection for ages and voltage-operated ELCBs before that. RCBOs combine the functionality of an RCD (trips in case of a current imbalance, e.g. because someone drives a nail between the line and CPC conductor of some T&E in the wall) and an MCB (trips in case someone overloads the circuit by plugging in three or four electric fires and a kettle and in case of a short-circuit), which is quite handy. This RCBO is probably for the electric shower based on the wire size. Could have been the cooker but that's less likely, I'd guess the cooker was one of the B32s on the left. The immersion tank was probably one of the B16s. The sticker says 100 amps because that's the rating of the whole cutout. That odd patch to the left of the light switch looks to me as if it might have been the position of the original light switch, probably lovely brass tumbler switches on wooden pattresses.
A very interesting video, thanks. Regarding data and power cables, electric vehicle chargers are often supplied through an armoured cable that has combined power and data, so clearly not a significant issue, as you say.
I was taught "George Brown is a live wire". This never made sense to me as George Brown (if you even remember him) was hardly a live wire, better remembered for being "tired end emotional".
Simple L1 is Brown, L2 is Black, L3 is Gray, N is Blue, PE is Yellow and Green, And we have allso PEN where Netural and Grounding is still pownd together before the consumer unit is installed. But that covers the basics. There is alot more as we got seprete categories for ac and dc and low and high voltage for both. And RCD is needed for anything for consumer units.
In Australia we use the same standard as UK / Black/Red then switched to Blue/Brown. I think the reason to change to Brown active and Blue neutral was to unify the colour codes across all of Europe (and a couple of other countries) so there was no chance of confusing anything with any of the old colour codes that were mismatched everywhere. Makes more sense than the US having black as "hot" and white as neutral :).
Really enjoy these updates, a pleasure to watch you take pride in your work and get bits done. Got our own renovation project starting in a few months and nice to be able to steal some ideas! Would appreciate some info or a video on the fibre link you've installed between the house and outside office. Keen to future proof and put some fibre in sensible places round my new place! Thanks!
Nothing said about slots cut into floor joists to rest cables on? 26:48 is a case in point where the slots become convenient runs for later wiring and it all gets packed in. Combine with floorboard movement then you get the cable sleeves rubbing away as canbe seen in this case.
Absolute rubbish about cable covers being rubbed off or worn. How far does your house move, is it vibrating! This myth started after a tragic fire in an OAP home. The inspector blamed no grommets on cables going in to a consumer unit for starting a fire. Quite a daft conclusion as cables were clipped and consumer unit screwed to the wall. Nothing moved. It was the incoming cable too small to supply enough power that went on fire after overheating. The same happened in houses in Chester UK. One 60A cable went from the street and looped from one house to the next, or was joined outside. When people started getting more and more electrical devices and storage heaters in the 90s, the old cables couldn't cope. So imagine two houses with one 60A cable feeding both, when storage heaters went on at say 1am, the mains cable overheated and caused house fires. Always have main cables checked and make sure you have your own !
Here in the USA, I've seen red and black for the hot side and white for neutral. Red is usually used for the alternate phase, so a red-black hookup would be 240V. Red is also sometimes used for a switched hot-side wire. I'm not surprised about the RCDs causing false trips; I installed a combination ground-fault/arc-fault interrupt for one circuit that seemed a bit suspect, and the first thing I noticed was that the light in the back entrance hall always tripped it. I rewired the return for that, which the builder had hooked up to the neighbor's side, to solve that problem, but it will still trip with the use of a number of older appliances, especially those with brush-motors. I had a 1978 wood-console TV (hot-chasssis, no mains transformer) until a few years ago and that had to run off an extension cord to a different circuit. I don't think these smart breakers were designed to be used with the sparky appliances and bodgy wiring that was considered normal 50 or 60 year ago.
In Canada normally black is the live wire and white is the neutral for 110 amp circuit. . Bare copper or green wire will be ground and if using 220 amp there will also be a red wire which is live.
@@GosforthHandyman You get used to it after touching it when it's hot!!! My late Father in-law and his son are both electricians. Learned enough to be handy.
Andy - Good overview of the ‘as was’ and the sort out. Nothing surprised me and it is worse in new builds. The whole aspect of building control and regulation of the electrical trades ( and plumbers/and so called gas engineers) needs a massive shake up. The race to the bottom on price and tradesman who do not know what a days work is and/or have absolute no pride in their work is endemic. This based on my personal experience of buying a new house (1999) from a supposedly quality house builder.
In the US we use the following: Black is the hot/live wire White is the neutral wire Bare copper or green is the ground/earth wire Red is a traveling power wire (three way switches)
I've spent the day preparing for having a 3 bed semi rewired (I was left the house in a will). Some's still the original 1950's black rubber sheath, some's grey but old & all of it's very odd indeed, with a mix of ring & radial, upstairs & downstairs split on two circuits for sockets but NOT by which floor they're on. One single socket on the landing on its own fuse. I'll rip the lot out, install new pattress boxes, chase the walls, run all the cable, then have a certified electrician do the final connecting & testing. Happy days...
Mine has no consumer unit just the fuse wire. The entire house is basically lengths of lamp flex and 120, 000 junction boxes. I am amazed that I am still not dead after a year..
Sounds like a great plan, turn everything off before you grab hold of that VIR, the insulation is going to zap you straight through it as soon as you stretch it 1mm, Ring circuits used to be split over the floors, so more like front and back than up and down, ther was nothing wrong with this method, but we're installing more radials now all with RCBO'S, and why one landing socket on the radial, ?
Quite often 3 beds weren't wired Ring Up / Ring Down, they were wired Front / Back across both floors with radial drops to downstairs for sockets. Landing socket may have been converted from the water heater circuit which would have been dedicated 15 amp as airing cupboard is normally on the landing in many a 3 bed.
@@bobcat9754 Going to get a sparky in and have it all re-wired with proper twin core. Not a massive job and not too expensive @ 2k or so for the lot. Just add it to the asking price next time round. It was/is an absolute horror show though. The 8kw electric shower is run off the kitchen light circuit and the cable runs outside the building up the wall. No words really. Old houses can really be a collection of bodges on top of bodges. IMHO we really need stricter regulations surrounding house sales to force people to get things up to spec or be liable.
If you think those electrics are bad Andy you should see some of the nightmare scenarios Delroy from Eastway Electrical finds himself in,he's been a spark for years but mind you he sometimes makes me cringe while watching his videos,if you have time which I doubt very much at the moment take a wee look at him,loving the series of videos on the new house by the way but missing all you other Tips and Testing content,hope you get back to that someday,I use your tape measure all the time now so managed to throw off the old imperial conversion calculations habit like us old guys always do,looking forward to the next episode
WOW looking at this it looks like a HOT MESS. I live in the US and am thankful for our wiring standards. I recently rewired a friend's home with him (we were supervised by a Master Electrician). We wired the house for a 200 amp service (he has a garage shop with a welder) as an upgrade from 100 amp. I do understand the reasoning for what you did. It just seems odd to me. We ended up running each line and labeling it clearly in a 1.2m x 1.2m square on a basement wall for future clarity and ease of servicing.
My understanding is that screw terminal boxes are considered serviceable items because the screws can come loose. All serviceable items have to be accessible so under floor isn’t acceptable and therefore couldn’t be signed off by the electrician??
I think what you’re seeing is a ring circuit as opposed to a radial circuit. Ring circuits are still common, though radials are increasingly used. You even occasionally see 3 wires in an MCB/RCBO when someone spurs off out of the consumer unit, perhaps not preferred but I don’t believe it is against the refs.
@@stevengrace6712 Wow, it sort of makes sense only if there is a fault condition in the circuit, it will most likely be undetected and the purpose is defeated. And I thought our rare US Shared Neutral or Edison Circuits (aka multi-wire branch circuits) were unusual.
@@drwhoeric I’m no expert but you can have a fault in the circuit and it still work but the current all flows down each leg independently, not ideal. If that makes sense!
@@stevengrace6712 No, I understand that, only the function of a ring circuit is to provide current to a series of loads where the wire is one size smaller than the breaker normally requires. For example if a ring is using wire capable of 10 amps and there is a 13 amp breaker with all sockets fused at 10 amps, the ring will be overloaded with a combined load being move than 10 amps with the breaker protection being 13 amps.
18:34 Is running a cable through plaster like that allowed over there? It would be a code violation in most parts of the USA, though I'm sure it's done anyway. Legally, it the cable is that close to the surface, you have to put it in conduit and I think they make steel shields so you can run a wire over (rather than through) a stud.
On rewireing a 1960’s house we found a nest like that and we were sleeping above it 😲 we only did this because when trying to fit a light in the dining room the wires crumbled and were told by a qualified electrician it needed replacement. Never again a nightmare !
In my rural neighborhood, many of the residents do their own electrical work, and I think it's legal to do so, but not always a good idea. Back in 1970 in our old farmhouse, I added extensively to the 1946 original wiring, but I called upon an electrical-savvy neighbor to check my work and make the connection to the breaker panel. We may be generally dealing with half of the UK voltage in the US, but 120 volts can kill or start fires, too. That taped-together mess that you found was a tragedy waiting to happen.
I saw that BG consumer unit and went oh no there's got to be at least 1 thing wrong inside... The RCBO neutral leads are stranded cable, so should have a new ferrule crimped on the end if the installer cuts the original end off and shortens them. I'm sure there's a regulation on this, but I'm not sad enough to know the number. I also know that all conductors should enter through the same knockout. Your earth is going through it's own hole compared to the meter tails. Also how come no surge protection fitted? These points are a bit picky, but a sparky shouldn't be making these errors.
I *think* you only need a crimp if it is over 16A; a soldered end passes below that. I only shortened my 6A RCBO for my smoke alarm when I rewired my house. did not touch any other RCBO. honestly... no-one shoudl make errors like what I see in that consumer box; bare live wires without insulation cover making me cringe for one...... (not an electrician; although when I got my house certified the guy they sent asked me why I didn;t certify it myself, (passed with flying colours) )
No SPD likely isn't an error, it's not required in regulations as it's worded as recommended currently, though if you fall outside of the calculation it arguably should be put in. Meter tails should enter via the same whole due to eddi currents in a metal enclosure, there's no requirement for the main earth cable to follow them. RCBO Neutral leads don't have to be ferule crimped if they're NOT cut shorter as the manufacturer heat crimped ends is deemed to meet the same requirement. My eyes and that still photo aren't good enough to say with 100% certainty that they're not still the manufacturers crimped end. Also, Hager? It's a BG board and the old one was Wylex.
@@effervescence5664 I don't know why I said hager lol. Anyway, I didn't want to get into quoting regs, but the second paragraph of 521.5.1 does say that all conductors (including cpc) should enter through the same hole. Obviously you don't have to ferrule the end of a fly lead given by the manufacturer as it will already have it. However, the ends of the RCBO fly leads have definitely been cut. You can see the stranded cable at the top of the terminals.
@@zXLuke4efcXz Lol Hager on the brain. It refers to circuit conductors in the wording mate, "the appropriate circuit conductor to be in the same enclosure". It's deliberately vague on main earth because you can run the main earth separately out of a CU to a TT stake - rear entry through a wall cavity etc. I've brought the same question up with my NICEIC assessors in the past when I have come across it and it's perfectly fine for just he line and neutral to pass through together. I'll take your word for it on the strands showing (honestly not got good eyes tonight, gotta say Unilites are very good though), if they have been cut bad on the chap that installed it, worse still if he over tightened them and crushed the heat crimp into splaying because he didn't use a torque driver.
@@effervescence5664 I thought the same as you until I had the same conversation with my NIC assessor where he said the opposite lol. Anyway, further down it says "The conductors of an a.c circuit installed in a ferromagnetic enclosure shall be arranged so that all line conductors and the neutral conductor, if an, and the appropriate protective conductor are within the same enclosure. Where such conductors enter a ferrous enclosure, they shall be arranged such that the conductors are only collectively surrounded by ferromagnetic material". The only exception is any addition protection (so the outside of an SWA cable).
Ah 'qualified' elecchickens! In my old house we had a bathroom water leak so I ripped up the floor & on inspecting the wiring for a downstairs ceiling rose found the downstairs lighting ring joined by twisting it together & covering each wire in paper masking tape. The house had been 'professionally rewired' about 3 years before I bought it & I'd not touched the electrics since. I contacted the company whose receipt was in all the docs I got with the house about the poor work & they basically laughed at me saying PROVE IT WAS US. Lovely. I do all my own electrics, being fully competent & aware of the regs. Part P be damned, there's no indemnity or guarantee the work a spark does just because their van has a sticker on it.
I think the same people worked on your house as worked on a school I taught at in West Newcastle (Slateyford to be precise, it's gone now). I was a physics teacher and wanted to shut the outlets off down one side of the lab to be safe, I opened the breaker that indicated that side of the lab, checked that the power was off; it wasn't. There were several breakers for different parts of the lab none of them worked. They'd wired everything through one breaker!
I was at a BAE factory and found someone wired wired 3phase stuff wrong. It was possible to get 415v between two sockets right next to each other on a workbench! That was corrected very quickly and everything else checked.
Have you considered asking the utility company to install a 100A isolator so that if you are working on the consumer unit you don't have to pull incoming 100A fuse and have to have it sealed by the elecy board Excellent videos Brian
the outside studio - is that the workshop? - is on that consumer unit. if its rcbo trips, does that not potentially trip the house consumer unit rcd? i know rcbo are supposed to isolate - but... I thought it was better to seperate the out-buildings with a henley block, to isolate the house from the outsidfe activities? Cheers
@@GosforthHandyman It gets worse. When it comes to running conductors inside conduits for switch legs, traveler wires... orange, purple, yellow, blue and many other colors can sometimes be seen. I am not even talking about 3 phase, either. Cheers. I like seeing how things are done in different places.
When we moved into our 1969 bungalow and wanted the consumer unit changed some sparks were saying it would need a full rewire before even coming when the CU was changed and all tested the electrician doing the testing commented that the results were better than a lot of new / nearly new builds he had tested / inspected. Totally agree that ripping out perfectly good wire just to keep the scrap man and Screwfix happy is frankly nonsensical.
@@GosforthHandyman our fusebox was put in in 2004 when house was rewired if a bulb went all the lights went out but since they fitted air source in 2012 that doesn't happen anymore
Smart meters are effectively a con, perpetrated by a dysfunctional industry. The "first generation" ones "can't" be transferred between providers. I'm pretty sure they could be reprogrammed to allow that, if the industry cared.
@@RichardFarmbrough The industry only want smart meters so they can push to charge you more at peak times. With a smart meter they know who is using what. It's got nothing to do with modernising or going green just charging you more.
The wire colours changed because if you're red/green colour blind (the most common form of colour blindness) then then red and green wires look identical... which is bad for obvious reasons.
@@135Ops We had both for many years, and i still come across them now. Although the cpc is not sheathed so solid green insulation was slid over the bare ends.
I feel for you, for the poor experience you’ve had with Eon. I’ve had to put up with their rubbish too. Utterly dreadful company, I would rather get my electricity from a nuclear reactor that is on the verge of a meltdown, than deal with those tossers again.
By far the worst utility company we've ever had to deal with. Will never use Eon again (didn't use them by choice, was just what the property was originally on). 👍
That distribution box is far newer than mine. I still have fuse wire and fuses in my box. I swapped supplier but nPower continued to bill me for 5 months even tho they wasnt my supplier.. Ended up blocking their payments via the bank, then nPower took a futher 6 months to reimburse me my overpayment and the money they robbed off me.
In USA (120V) bare or green is earth, white is neutral, black is hot and red is switched. In 240V circuits black _and_ red are hot, white neutral and green or bare earth. 3-phase will have different colours depending upon voltage. blue, yellow & orange are commonly found in addition to black red and white.
@@GosforthHandyman you have to remember that most residential wiring in the U.S. is 240V center tapped from the transformer. So we get two legs of the sine wave that are 120v from neutral but are 240V across both legs. 240 is used for major appliances like clothes dryers, stoves, aircon and water heaters, while lights and small appliances like kettles, toasters etc usually run 120V. Of course this means 120V wiring needs to carry twice the amperage for the same work done and therefore has to be much thicker gauge.
@@GosforthHandyman I'm envious of Germans who get 400V three phase to the home. But it's probably best because I'd have _way_ more heavy duty shop tools in the barn if better power were available! 🤣
An RCBO is basically an MCB and an RCD combined into one unit, you would install one RCBO per circuit, so if that circuit trips its only that circuit that trips and all others remain on, it stands for "Residual current breaker with overcurrent protection" RCB-O
Dear God Andy. That original setup is a rat's nest. I can see so much bare copper inside that CU, including on the incoming tails!!!! Given the heat in that cupboard I'm surprised the house needed storage heaters!! 😁
@24:20 80A? Wow, 200 amp is the standard here in the US. Back in the 1920's and 1930's when America was getting electrfied and there wasn't the electrical appliances that we have now, 50 or 60 amp fuse boxes were the standard. They typically had four screw in type glass fuses. You can still find them in older houses but are considered generally unsafe. Then breaker panels came into being in the 1950's and 1960's with 100 amp being the standard. Now, with everything being electronic and all the appliances we use, 200 amp breaker panels is the standard. And even sometimes that's not enough for some newly built modern houses. In that case, they typically install sub panels for the load.
@@andrewgarner9194 Split phase 120-0-120 so higher power devices like water heaters and cookery have a 240v supply and sockets and lights are fed at 120v
100 amp is the usual on new properties. Older houses often had 60 amp, that can usually be upgraded to 80 by a simple fuse change so that’s presumably what happened here- changing the supply cable would be horrendously expensive. Remember most of the UK had mains gas for heating so 80 or 100 amps at 230 volts will give more than sufficiently power- what would you need more than 23 kw for if you’re not using it for heat?
@Andrew Garner It comes in from the electric company on two 110/120v legs. At the service panel, each leg is connected to separate bus bars. Each bus bar is 110/120v. To get 220/240v, a heavy duty 30, 50 or 100 amp circuit breaker straddles both bus bars is used. Typically, house voltage runs about 117-118 volts. Less than 110 volts can cause brownouts and burnout electric motors. More than 120 volts can cause power surges and fry out electronics.
This may have been mentioned in a previous video... but OMG - somebody sprayed insulation onto the underside of the roof tiles? (26:55 in video). Anybody caught doing that should be treated with the same leniency, possibly less, than those caught applying textured ceilings.
I've had worse. A system that seemed normal but when you take out the fuse, the ground cable suddenly becomes a live wire. making every socket in the entire company building an electrical hazard. We noticed it only 6 months after buying the building. So when doing electrics in unknown places, assume the worst, making it "safe" by pulling fuses does not guarantee anything, not even the ground cables.
@@GosforthHandyman If it remember correctly 528.1. The main point is every conductor or cable shall be rated for the highest voltage present when separation is not provided.
@@stuartarnold9444 I would ask them to call out again as the clamp that is on your lead sheath is one that should be used for bonding the das and water pipes. we use constant tension springs or a sweated earth. The sticker on the main fuse is what the cut outs max rating is 100amps they should have added a sticker to say there is an 80a fuse installed.
There was no requirement for lighting to be RCD until the powers that be decided that ALL cables buried in the wall under 50mm needed 30mA RCD protection, which is pretty much all the housing stock in the UK.
You're allowed a mix, but you need to have a sticker on the box saying that the wiring colours are mixed. All new cabling needs to be in the new colours. 👍
Not an electrician, but your tech looks similar to what we have in Australia (unsurprisingly, being the old penal colony) We tend to have more circuits in each house, each with their own RCDs. Nowadays even lighting circuits must have their own RCD installed.
I'm glad you at minimum replaced that circuit board, and if your happy that the existing remaining electrics are safe, then there's defo no reason for a full rewire.
@gosforthhandyman - please consider using a proper voltage indicator to prove dead, especially on a crazy mess like this. The indicator pens are useful, but really should not be used to confirm a circuit is dead.
No, light bulbs blowing doesn't contribute to RCD tripping. Originally, in Australia, there were no requirements for RCD's on lighting as they were not considered to be a problem. Yes, yes, I know they are of course, so now all circuits require an RCD including fixed AC's, ovens etc.
The colors were harmonized all over Europe. They used colors not used before so there was no confusion anywhere. Germans used to have red as earth. You can see an obvious problem in importing German products to UK.
An RCBO is just an MCB and RCD in a single device, it doesn’t do anything more or less. Main advantage is that when it pops due to an earth fault, you already know which circuit is problematic, compared to when the RCD pops and you need to start finding which circuit is actually faulty.
@@okaro6595 depending on the model they’ll have different positions depending on the fault, some might not turn on without tuning them off first after an RCD trip, but will turn on just fine after an over-current event.
Thls house would have had electrics from new. My grandma lived in a similar aged house in South Gosforth overlooking the railway. It had electric from new. My present house was built around 1912 and built with gas lighting but was converted to electricity in the 1920's we think. Supply used to come in via overhead pole. Still does but now comes out ot the ground up the pole then down the pole back underground to the new meter box. Last pole in the street supplying about eight houses. We found an old electricity supply company label on the wooden board that everything was mounted on and we still have some defunct remnants of lead cable in the loft.
Black and Red swaped to Blue and Brown so everyone could see a difference between them - even if they were colourblind. There is a colourblind state where they are virtually identical - thus dangerous. "Colour blindness affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women (0.5%) in the world." I worked with a guy who was red green colour blind and one of my best mates is pink/blue colourblind.
Interesting! Although I still find blue / brown a bizarre choice... but looking in to it Cen didn't have much option without making things more dangerous for certain countries. 👍
in Iceland, before the current brown, blue, yellow-green standard, the colors used to be black, blue, yellow green. before that, in very old houses that you could find red live and blue or black neutral and white earth. sometimes if there was a shortage of imported material, the electricians of the past made up their own colour scheme with what they had.
Superb video, thank you for posting.
The original lead sheathed cable runs were so beautifully installed. It’s amazing how much more pride tradesmen took in their work 100 years ago.
Yup, all the lead stuff was a real pain to get out since it had been so securely fixed. 👍😂
Looks perfectly normal in an old house to me ! When I cleared my Dad’s flat I found the fuse box had been one of the old wooden ones, the woodworm had eaten all of it so live brass was projecting into the cupboard ! Again, not a surprise, I’ve seen it before …
Your mileage must vary from mine! I just this afternoon pulled up a floorboard (simply to check for pipes before screwing down some creaky boards) and right underneath was some old lead-sheathed cable, presumably as old as the house (about 1935), installed at the most random angles, very poorly supported, and with a twisted-together joint in the middle of it. Obviously Captain Bodge was pretty active in the 1930s.
The storage heater story made me laugh as it was exactly what we did as soon as we moved into our cottage. The storage heater wiring was like something out of a 70's Dr Who set. I sent the steel boxes for scrap and am using the bricks for lots of projects. They're really nice, a pleasant burgundy colour.
Unfortunately I no longer allow 'qualified electricians' into my house. Two very bad experiences with appalling standards of workmanship have totalled my trust in them. Twenty years working in theatre and the music industry including designing and installing the cabling in lighting grids etc I think adequately qualifies me to make an infinity better job as I really care about my own house both safety wise and usability wise.
All service header fuses say 100A on them regardless of the value of the cartridge.
Really interesting video, thanks.
It's not just about the £5 they were making on FIT, it was about the money they were saving by not importing from the grid during the day.
A nice well presented video, great to see all those hazards identified and removed in favour of up an up to date and safe installation. Well done.
Andy, this is a very good piece of content. My father in law was an electrician and I did lots with him over the years but I know my limitations. I have just moved into a 2003 build house where lighting junctions are in the switch boxes not the ceiling roses so I will seek competent help if I need to.
I was dealing with my daughter's house some years back and found one power socket run off the 6mm supply to the power shower. There were other howlers in that house as well but we stripped it all out for a full rewire. My work passed the full inspection so I was pleased but my electrician did the final connections and testing.
Fortunately I have a trusted electrician who I am happy to pay to do work now.
Better to loop in at the switch as it makes swapping from a rose to a pendant so, so much easier! (not an electrician)
Hi Andy,
I have solar panels here in Whitley Bay. We have had them for approx 6 years and usually make around £500 per year. Our energy provider pays money directly into our account every quarter. (On 2nd August we received £31.00 deemed payment and £179 Generation payment).They cost us £4.400 to install and the company estimated that it would take roughly 6-7 years to break even. We live in a bungalow and the rear of the property is South facing 😁 which is good, as according to the installation company, orientation is everything ! So they can be profitable, but obviously if your property is not in a good position, then you are wasting your time.
It's amazing what you can find when renovating old property! When you see some of the bodge ups (especially with electrics) it's amazing there are not more house fires!
Another great vid. Keep them coming😁👍
Another great interesting video, thank you.
I used to work for an ISP and the one thing that stood out for me was a damaged network cable with the twisted pairs held together by sellotape. I mean it wasn't even electrical tape!!
The EMI in a domestic setting is far less of a risk than in industrial, so power and network run alongside in my house too, with no issues.
Yup, ISP background here too and totally agree. I'm sure we could share many similar horror stories. 😂👍
@@GosforthHandyman I do the same thing in my Home but it's not by code here in the states.
In Australia, Lines are red, white and blue, while neutral is black. Flexible cables are brown for live and blue for neutral. In appliances, all other colours can be used except for yellow and green or a combination of those two.
very interesting -- thank you!
I imagine every old house has a fire-hazard hidden in the walls or floors - mine did. I opened a wall one day and found a loose connection (no junction box) arcing and sparking, and sitting in a pile of ancient wood shavings.
So someone's probably already commented on this (probably with a lot of 'boo, EU, evil' noise), we switched to the brown and blue (brown black grey, blue, green/yellow, to be specific) to harmonise with the EU (other members also had various other schemes prior to this), and the primary reason is to ensure conductors can be distinguished by the colour blind. Specifically the striped CPC (earth, ground..) is highly identifiable even with full colour blindness, however unlike the prior scheme, all phases and neutral can be distinguished with any form of single colour blindness.
Now, we did switch the CPC to striped in.. the late 70s, I believe, but it was later decided to harmonise fully because, honestly, it makes more sense than everyone having different schemes, and is slightly better in terms of colour blindness.
1977 for Green > Green/Yellow CPC, 2004 for Harmonization but that wasn't down to colour blindness. If was for consistency across the block so everyone at the same nominal voltage could work in any of the countries in the block without having to retrain. Though in practice the wiring standards and styles are so different across the block it has lead to some horrendous installs.
@@effervescence5664 Yes, I may have expressed that poorly. The reason for the colour scheme is that it's about as good as you get for colour blindness. The reason we switched to it was to harmonize. The major safety concern is the CPC colour, which was already resolved.
@@Monkeh616 Don't worry about it, I used to have to read through peoples answers to those exact questions. I just try to impart the relevant information as best as possible, but yes the safety concern was addressed in 1977, though having a colour blind friend when I first did my apprenticeship I can tell you no matter what the colours are if they're colour blind on the wrong spectrum it still goes bang after they've wired it up.
Yup, not specifically EU but Cen (Cenelec) I believe? Still a member of that. 👍👍
@@GosforthHandyman Majority of the wider Cenelec membership didn't come in until 2014, though appliance harmonization came into being in 1996 with plug top harmonization around 1978.
Great useful content GH! Thanks for taking the time to explain in detail and share - much appreciated.
I don't think anyone else has mentioned it, so to answer your question Andy:
RCD - Residual Current Device - cuts the power if it detects an imbalance between the current flowing down the line and neutral. This would happen if there was a leakage to earth via maybe a damp connection, or perhaps a person! They're usually set to 30mA in domestic installations, which is likely to be low enough to avoid death but high enough to avoid nuisance trips.
MCB - Miniature Circuit Breaker - cuts the power if the current exceeds the rating. Think of it as an electronic fuse.
RCBO - Residual Circuit Breaker with Overcurrent protection - basically an MCB and RCD in one box.
Cool - great info! 👍
in Argentina is blue for N and brown/red for live but we must use bipole breakers. Neutral cables are not shared in a bus bar
Really good explanation Andy , bloody horrific that . Someone needed a good ticking off . Shoddy workmanship hacks me off . As someone who spent 35 years in construction . I have seen things that would make us weep .
I'm amazed every day by what I find. 😂👍👍
The worst I ever came across was in a loft - wires simply twisted together with a bit of tape wrapped over each connection, with the whole lot stuffed into a brown paper bag. Thirty years later I still have trouble believing that it really was like that.
@@ianbird4737 That’s horrendous Ian , worst I ever see not electrics, was a glue lam beam was to short to sit on the supporting walls either side . So the foreman glued and screwed a scaffold plank either end .This was a school gym . Was told to mind my own business when I told him he cannot do that 🤨
22:00 How could the bathroom storage heater be off the socket ring - it would have been on all the time as it wouldn’t have passed via the off-peak contactor?
Yup. Was just a switched fused spur and a thermostat on the heater, so yes - would have been on all the time (or more likely off all the time). 🙄
The switch from red + black to brown and blue was to bring us in line with the same colours the EU were using I believe - They wanted to make it consistent all round the EU so everyone knew which cables were which
law say all europe EU need cable colour have brown ,=hot wire, blue =neutral, green/yellow or green wire =GROUND and need be connected ewery metal junctiuon box and metal covered engine,machine,motor, ewerythin need be ground, this have law and rules if inspector see other colour today have fail and not accept this house not newer anybody can move live if not has change all wire right colours. and ewery handyman not newer can do elektric work, need be 3 year school and 2 year work and then examine and certification then can make elektric work all around EU area same law.
22:30 and that's why even though I'mnot an electrician I learnt on my own and now I do all the electric work around my house as it should be
I rented a flat in Turkey and the electrical work there was frightening. There was one socket with the earth wired to live, I got a shock off that. Another socket didn't work, when I checked none of the wires had been connected to the socket. When we bought an electric shower the guy who fitted it found the wires it needed to be connected to, removed insulation, he then put on washing up gloves and twisted the wires together. He didn't disconnect the power whilst doing this.
regarding data cabling, in this country it is regulated to be separate from power, to make it safer as a decorator/renovator will not be able to bang a nail into a wall and join comms wires to a live electric wire and create a dangerous situation for comms workers. no one in a data centre will be hanging any pictures on the walls.
We used to have electrics like that and the best part about it was they were put in by Yorkshire Electricity. Everytime we had something new they would add another metal box to the power supply. We ended up with a wall in the larder that looked like Battersea Power Station. Thankfully my nephew is an electrician and we now have an electrical system that is both efficient and neat and tidy.
Glad you got sorted! 👍
🤣🤣😂. " Battersea....".
if you want see good elektric work go to finland and sweden houses looking not any error ewer anywere, all has build perfect and safety.
Looking at the photo of the old CU, the neutral bar appears to be fed from the *supply* side of the switch, meaning there was no double-pole isolation, just isolation of the line conductor. Also, - my god - I've never seen so many wires jammed in the top of a main switch before :o
Normally while, or also gray, white w/color stripe for neutral, normally black or red (or other), green grounding, for 120/240vac residential.
In our area metal conduit is required for residential electric.
Accepted commercial 3 phase 120/208/230 black ,red, and blue, 277/480 brown, orange, yellow, but not required by national electric code
Chicago area?
@@TheChipmunk2008 you at correct 🎉
I’m a believer that conduit is the best way for electric installation
@@monteglover4133 I worked for 5 years stateside.... And definitely re conduit. Allows for changes and additions and it's safer
Interesting! 👍
@@GosforthHandyman construction differences is part of what makes it very interesting
IE: 99% of our walls are wood stud construction even most brick houses are a brick veneer. But last 100’s years
Back in the early 1980's, I knew a guy who was apprentice trained with The London Electricity Board (LEB). He passed all his exams and qualifications and was personally NICEIC certified. He told me that his LEB training had even included 3-phase wiring for industrial applications, working on switchgear in power stations and outside power installations "up poles and on pylons". He said to me that you must respect electricity because:
You can't see it,
You can't hear it,
You can't smell it.
So always switch off/disconnect/isolate and test for current before working on wiring.
Thank you for your uploads Gosforth Handyman. Stay safe and well.
In the "old days" you would remove the fuse and put it in your pocket before working on a circuit. Now you can't do that.
@@RichardFarmbrough The guy in charge of electrical on a small hydro plant had a drinking problem. I put my own lock on the breaker for the circuit I was working on. This guy in charge comes along and starts trying keys in my lock.
MCB's protect against overloads and short circuits therefore protecting the cables & equipment attached to the cables. An RCD protects against an imbalance between the supply current & return current. This might happen if you were touching a live part & the current was "returning" through you to ground. Therefore protecting the consumer. An RCD won't protect against overcurrent or all types of short circuits.
An RCBO does the work of both a MCB & RCB in one unit. Brilliant video btw.
Good explanation. The reason for the switch is to totally disconnect the supply for safety reasons. The last thing you want is the mains going off and the solar pumping power back in to the grid and then running through transformers.
20:25 wow that's some shocking electrics you have there. Looking forward to the renovation of your home. Its going to be great with a before and after comparison.
Cheers! Getting there!
Very interesting , some times it can say on the incoming supply carrier 100 ams but this is more to do with the rating of the carrier not necessarily the fuse size it contains. A point of interest regards to dis board blanks they now should be the type that clip over the bus bar . Also the supply going to the outside studio is possibly not compliant with current regulations if the earth is not separated from the house , via the use of an earth spike and a main RCD mounted within the studio . The electrical regulations change so fast these days and keeping on board with the latest dictate is a minefield , and even then they can often be open to interpretation and will generate much debate among electrical contractors . Very glad I’m retired and free from all the hassle . Best wishes and kind regards as always 😀👍👍👍
@3:39 Here in The Great Industrial Northeast across the pond, 110/120v electric is black = hot, white = neutral, and bare copper = ground.
220v has the addition of one extra wire that is hot and it is red.
12v is a different story. It can be one of two ways.
Black = hot and white = neutral
OR
Red = hot and black = neutral.
Many people get easily confused with 12v wiring. The trade off is it's not usually deadly if you make a mistake.
There is no 110/220 in the USA anymore, it's all been updated to 120/240, even though it is often referred to as 110/220.
There is no neutral on DC. Black is negative and red is positive (usually).
Interesting! In the UK we mostly seem to say 220V or 240V but I think technically it's 230V... I'm sure a spark can confirm. 👍
@@GosforthHandyman I believe from what I've read, the voltage had changed over there in the UK and is now 230V but used to be 220V and also maybe it was also 240V for some time. Here in the US it had been 110/220V years ago but was standardized to a nominal 120/240V. Some people forget that it isn't just 120V here, but 120/240VAC 60Hz Single Phase.
@@GosforthHandyman fun story. The UK has been 240V for yonks (although loosely regulated) and much of Europe 220V. The EU commission decided that we should all harmonise at a single voltage, so 230V was decided. How to achieve that without everyone rewinding all their generators and throwing away all their equipment? Simple; the UK is now 230V -6% +10% and the EU is 230V -10% +6%. So nothing changed but we’re all now the same! So you’re likely to find 240V actually coming out of your sockets but anywhere within the permitted range is possible.
Interesting video thanks for sharing
An RCD will only trip if there's an earth leakage fault, so a bulb blowing shouldn't cause this to trip but may cause your MCB to trip hope that makes sense.
Loving the series Andy - thank you for taking the time to detail what you're doing! I found some dodgy wiring in my last house; the neighbour's ex husband (only ever referred to as 'that ar*ehole') was a qualified spark. He had installed a couple of additional sockets in one of the bedrooms - I was initially impressed to find that the ring had been extended properly, with a spur also running off the first new socket to the second, however when I started to look closer he had run a single length of T&E from the ring to the first socket with an additional single piece of wire. The earth was carrying current (scary as the earth in 2.5mm T&E has a smaller sectional area than Live & Neutral!) and there was no earth protection whatsoever on the circuit. I know that it's unlikely to be sucking a huge current draw in that location but being a children's bedroom at the time the consequences didn't bear thinking about. The fact that he was a qualified professional means he knew the risks he was taking with other people's lives. I ripped it all out to find that no sheathing/conduit had been used in the chase either. Our kitchen electrics had been 'blessed' by the same genius previously too - good luck finding an earth signal on half of those sockets! I like to do my own work when it comes to electrics in the house but always get it commissioned by a trusted and qualified pro!
My kitchen was full of ungrounded outlets that previous owners had added. For most of them, I could dig out enough ground connections to fix them, but for one, the only way to make it safer was to run a green wire to a clamp on the pipe for the washing machine.
An MCB only protects against over current.
An RCD only protects against earth leakage faults.
An RCBO combines both functions.
👍👍
And I thought thing were bad here in the US.... you definitely had your hands full with that mess! good thing you're rewiring the house... lots of fire traps. could you imagine the in floor splice that was wrapped blowing out and starting a fire... scary! even here in N.A. (USA) stuff like that's totally illegal!
@8:15 That's exactly why residential solar technology has not caught on in the US.
The payback for the cost is somewhere in the 20-30 year range. Most people don't keep their homes that long.
Besides if the payback of a large project is more than 7-8 years, it generally isn't worth the investment.
Not to mention the environment impact of producing the panels, which I believe is still substantial. 👍
You can't really lump the whole US as one, the returns in Alaska would be completely different to those in Cali, Arizona, etc. I've seen people in sunny states have a payback period of 5-6 years which, IMO, is well worth it financially, before you even consider the environment impact.
If every new house had the whole roof covered in solar panels it would help the uk/world be greener and .Iv never got why they only fit them on the southern facing roof as they use Uv rays to produce electricity so a whole roof would produce more then a just on a south facing roof
@bmwman1981 Smart solar panels are computer controlled to not only angle towards the sun throughout the day but also the seasons to maximize solar density on the panels.
@@freetolook3727 most domestic ones don't.
My mates workshop has 3 phase, He now has Blues that are lives (3 phase) and blues that are neutrals. Genius!
I was pleased to quit when the 17th came out.
Light bulbs mainly tripped MCBs because they sometimes short out when they blow. The reasoning behind putting the lighting on the non-RCD side was mainly to keep the lights on even if something plugged into a socket tripped the RCD. Electricians can be a bit paranoid and many didn't install RCDs unless they were absolutely required to, which is why split-load CUs were a thing. On what's known as a TT system (the earths are only connected to a rod outside) you've had whole-house RCD protection for ages and voltage-operated ELCBs before that.
RCBOs combine the functionality of an RCD (trips in case of a current imbalance, e.g. because someone drives a nail between the line and CPC conductor of some T&E in the wall) and an MCB (trips in case someone overloads the circuit by plugging in three or four electric fires and a kettle and in case of a short-circuit), which is quite handy. This RCBO is probably for the electric shower based on the wire size. Could have been the cooker but that's less likely, I'd guess the cooker was one of the B32s on the left. The immersion tank was probably one of the B16s.
The sticker says 100 amps because that's the rating of the whole cutout.
That odd patch to the left of the light switch looks to me as if it might have been the position of the original light switch, probably lovely brass tumbler switches on wooden pattresses.
The FiT is sold with the house as it's considered part of the fixtures and fittings, it's also part of the value of the house.
I made an Italian pizza oven and a barbecue from fire bricks out of one of the old heaters, great job!
A very interesting video, thanks.
Regarding data and power cables, electric vehicle chargers are often supplied through an armoured cable that has combined power and data, so clearly not a significant issue, as you say.
I've always been taught live is Brown because "that's the colour your trousers go if you touch it"
😂😂
I was taught "George Brown is a live wire". This never made sense to me as George Brown (if you even remember him) was hardly a live wire, better remembered for being "tired end emotional".
@@robertpearce802 Always remember to put Green/Yellow sleeving on Tired and Emotional conductors. I think.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Shows the value of a visual examination. Often better than plugging a tester in
Simple L1 is Brown, L2 is Black, L3 is Gray, N is Blue, PE is Yellow and Green, And we have allso PEN where Netural and Grounding is still pownd together before the consumer unit is installed. But that covers the basics. There is alot more as we got seprete categories for ac and dc and low and high voltage for both. And RCD is needed for anything for consumer units.
In Australia we use the same standard as UK / Black/Red then switched to Blue/Brown.
I think the reason to change to Brown active and Blue neutral was to unify the colour codes across all of Europe (and a couple of other countries) so there was no chance of confusing anything with any of the old colour codes that were mismatched everywhere.
Makes more sense than the US having black as "hot" and white as neutral :).
Really enjoy these updates, a pleasure to watch you take pride in your work and get bits done. Got our own renovation project starting in a few months and nice to be able to steal some ideas!
Would appreciate some info or a video on the fibre link you've installed between the house and outside office. Keen to future proof and put some fibre in sensible places round my new place!
Thanks!
Night storage heaters and solar really makes no sense on so many levels. Great videos, looking forward to seeing your extension finished.
Nothing said about slots cut into floor joists to rest cables on? 26:48 is a case in point where the slots become convenient runs for later wiring and it all gets packed in. Combine with floorboard movement then you get the cable sleeves rubbing away as canbe seen in this case.
Absolute rubbish about cable covers being rubbed off or worn. How far does your house move, is it vibrating! This myth started after a tragic fire in an OAP home. The inspector blamed no grommets on cables going in to a consumer unit for starting a fire. Quite a daft conclusion as cables were clipped and consumer unit screwed to the wall. Nothing moved. It was the incoming cable too small to supply enough power that went on fire after overheating.
The same happened in houses in Chester UK. One 60A cable went from the street and looped from one house to the next, or was joined outside. When people started getting more and more electrical devices and storage heaters in the 90s, the old cables couldn't cope. So imagine two houses with one 60A cable feeding both, when storage heaters went on at say 1am, the mains cable overheated and caused house fires.
Always have main cables checked and make sure you have your own !
Here in the USA, I've seen red and black for the hot side and white for neutral. Red is usually used for the alternate phase, so a red-black hookup would be 240V. Red is also sometimes used for a switched hot-side wire. I'm not surprised about the RCDs causing false trips; I installed a combination ground-fault/arc-fault interrupt for one circuit that seemed a bit suspect, and the first thing I noticed was that the light in the back entrance hall always tripped it. I rewired the return for that, which the builder had hooked up to the neighbor's side, to solve that problem, but it will still trip with the use of a number of older appliances, especially those with brush-motors. I had a 1978 wood-console TV (hot-chasssis, no mains transformer) until a few years ago and that had to run off an extension cord to a different circuit. I don't think these smart breakers were designed to be used with the sparky appliances and bodgy wiring that was considered normal 50 or 60 year ago.
In Canada normally black is the live wire and white is the neutral for 110 amp circuit. . Bare copper or green wire will be ground and if using 220 amp there will also be a red wire which is live.
Do you mean voltage not amp
@@bobcat9754 most likely not an electrician!!! Always get them confused.
Black for live?!? That would really mess with my head! 😬
@@GosforthHandyman You get used to it after touching it when it's hot!!! My late Father in-law and his son are both electricians. Learned enough to be handy.
glad to hear you're moved in at last and looking forward to seeing that video
Not long now! 👍😁
It was red & black cables then we changed colours to brown & blue match EU standardisation. Also changed the colours of 3 phase stuff as well.
Andy - Good overview of the ‘as was’ and the sort out. Nothing surprised me and it is worse in new builds. The whole aspect of building control and regulation of the electrical trades ( and plumbers/and so called gas engineers) needs a massive shake up. The race to the bottom on price and tradesman who do not know what a days work is and/or have absolute no pride in their work is endemic. This based on my personal experience of buying a new house (1999) from a supposedly quality house builder.
In the US we use the following:
Black is the hot/live wire
White is the neutral wire
Bare copper or green is the ground/earth wire
Red is a traveling power wire (three way switches)
red also designates the other side of phase and than there is blue orange brown purple for other hot/live conductors for phases on 3 phase systems lol
I love the way they notched the top of the floor joists to accept the electrics.
in the US to do that notching electricians use a screwdriver as a chisel and pliers as a hammer. :)
I've spent the day preparing for having a 3 bed semi rewired (I was left the house in a will).
Some's still the original 1950's black rubber sheath, some's grey but old & all of it's very odd indeed, with a mix of ring & radial, upstairs & downstairs split on two circuits for sockets but NOT by which floor they're on. One single socket on the landing on its own fuse.
I'll rip the lot out, install new pattress boxes, chase the walls, run all the cable, then have a certified electrician do the final connecting & testing.
Happy days...
Mine has no consumer unit just the fuse wire. The entire house is basically lengths of lamp flex and 120, 000 junction boxes.
I am amazed that I am still not dead after a year..
Sounds like a great plan, turn everything off before you grab hold of that VIR, the insulation is going to zap you straight through it as soon as you stretch it 1mm, Ring circuits used to be split over the floors, so more like front and back than up and down, ther was nothing wrong with this method, but we're installing more radials now all with RCBO'S, and why one landing socket on the radial, ?
Quite often 3 beds weren't wired Ring Up / Ring Down, they were wired Front / Back across both floors with radial drops to downstairs for sockets. Landing socket may have been converted from the water heater circuit which would have been dedicated 15 amp as airing cupboard is normally on the landing in many a 3 bed.
@@cgavin1 still not dead, did you die then, turn it all off, rip it all out, put in some temp sockets and start again'
@@bobcat9754 Going to get a sparky in and have it all re-wired with proper twin core. Not a massive job and not too expensive @ 2k or so for the lot. Just add it to the asking price next time round. It was/is an absolute horror show though. The 8kw electric shower is run off the kitchen light circuit and the cable runs outside the building up the wall. No words really. Old houses can really be a collection of bodges on top of bodges. IMHO we really need stricter regulations surrounding house sales to force people to get things up to spec or be liable.
If you think those electrics are bad Andy you should see some of the nightmare scenarios Delroy from Eastway Electrical finds himself in,he's been a spark for years but mind you he sometimes makes me cringe while watching his videos,if you have time which I doubt very much at the moment take a wee look at him,loving the series of videos on the new house by the way but missing all you other Tips and Testing content,hope you get back to that someday,I use your tape measure all the time now so managed to throw off the old imperial conversion calculations habit like us old guys always do,looking forward to the next episode
Will check it out! 👍👍
WOW looking at this it looks like a HOT MESS. I live in the US and am thankful for our wiring standards. I recently rewired a friend's home with him (we were supervised by a Master Electrician). We wired the house for a 200 amp service (he has a garage shop with a welder) as an upgrade from 100 amp. I do understand the reasoning for what you did. It just seems odd to me. We ended up running each line and labeling it clearly in a 1.2m x 1.2m square on a basement wall for future clarity and ease of servicing.
At your highly limiting USA 110V supply voltage the 200A service capacity equals a 100A service operating at 240V.
My understanding is that screw terminal boxes are considered serviceable items because the screws can come loose. All serviceable items have to be accessible so under floor isn’t acceptable and therefore couldn’t be signed off by the electrician??
Doesn't require removal of existing items and you then get in to the debate / ambiguity of what is considered 'accessible'. 👍
I am in the United States and I am surprised to see circuit breakers with more than one wire bonded to a screw. Is this allowed in the UK?
I think what you’re seeing is a ring circuit as opposed to a radial circuit. Ring circuits are still common, though radials are increasingly used. You even occasionally see 3 wires in an MCB/RCBO when someone spurs off out of the consumer unit, perhaps not preferred but I don’t believe it is against the refs.
@@stevengrace6712 Wow, it sort of makes sense only if there is a fault condition in the circuit, it will most likely be undetected and the purpose is defeated. And I thought our rare US Shared Neutral or Edison Circuits (aka multi-wire branch circuits) were unusual.
@@drwhoeric the origin of this was to allow the use of less copper: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_circuit
@@drwhoeric I’m no expert but you can have a fault in the circuit and it still work but the current all flows down each leg independently, not ideal. If that makes sense!
@@stevengrace6712 No, I understand that, only the function of a ring circuit is to provide current to a series of loads where the wire is one size smaller than the breaker normally requires. For example if a ring is using wire capable of 10 amps and there is a 13 amp breaker with all sockets fused at 10 amps, the ring will be overloaded with a combined load being move than 10 amps with the breaker protection being 13 amps.
Joseph Swan...proud it is I am. But I think even our Joe would have been aghast at those electrics! 🤣💞
Lol tell me about it! That was yet another loft find. Need somebody to date it. 👍😁
18:34 Is running a cable through plaster like that allowed over there? It would be a code violation in most parts of the USA, though I'm sure it's done anyway. Legally, it the cable is that close to the surface, you have to put it in conduit and I think they make steel shields so you can run a wire over (rather than through) a stud.
On rewireing a 1960’s house we found a nest like that and we were sleeping above it 😲 we only did this because when trying to fit a light in the dining room the wires crumbled and were told by a qualified electrician it needed replacement. Never again a nightmare !
In my rural neighborhood, many of the residents do their own electrical work, and I think it's legal to do so, but not always a good idea. Back in 1970 in our old farmhouse, I added extensively to the 1946 original wiring, but I called upon an electrical-savvy neighbor to check my work and make the connection to the breaker panel. We may be generally dealing with half of the UK voltage in the US, but 120 volts can kill or start fires, too. That taped-together mess that you found was a tragedy waiting to happen.
Cheers Bob! Yeah, it was a crazy mess. So glad it's all gone! 👍
Love your channel. Awesome work my friend..
I saw that BG consumer unit and went oh no there's got to be at least 1 thing wrong inside...
The RCBO neutral leads are stranded cable, so should have a new ferrule crimped on the end if the installer cuts the original end off and shortens them. I'm sure there's a regulation on this, but I'm not sad enough to know the number.
I also know that all conductors should enter through the same knockout. Your earth is going through it's own hole compared to the meter tails.
Also how come no surge protection fitted?
These points are a bit picky, but a sparky shouldn't be making these errors.
I *think* you only need a crimp if it is over 16A; a soldered end passes below that. I only shortened my 6A RCBO for my smoke alarm when I rewired my house. did not touch any other RCBO.
honestly... no-one shoudl make errors like what I see in that consumer box; bare live wires without insulation cover making me cringe for one...... (not an electrician; although when I got my house certified the guy they sent asked me why I didn;t certify it myself, (passed with flying colours) )
No SPD likely isn't an error, it's not required in regulations as it's worded as recommended currently, though if you fall outside of the calculation it arguably should be put in. Meter tails should enter via the same whole due to eddi currents in a metal enclosure, there's no requirement for the main earth cable to follow them. RCBO Neutral leads don't have to be ferule crimped if they're NOT cut shorter as the manufacturer heat crimped ends is deemed to meet the same requirement. My eyes and that still photo aren't good enough to say with 100% certainty that they're not still the manufacturers crimped end.
Also, Hager? It's a BG board and the old one was Wylex.
@@effervescence5664 I don't know why I said hager lol.
Anyway, I didn't want to get into quoting regs, but the second paragraph of 521.5.1 does say that all conductors (including cpc) should enter through the same hole.
Obviously you don't have to ferrule the end of a fly lead given by the manufacturer as it will already have it. However, the ends of the RCBO fly leads have definitely been cut. You can see the stranded cable at the top of the terminals.
@@zXLuke4efcXz Lol Hager on the brain. It refers to circuit conductors in the wording mate, "the appropriate circuit conductor to be in the same enclosure". It's deliberately vague on main earth because you can run the main earth separately out of a CU to a TT stake - rear entry through a wall cavity etc. I've brought the same question up with my NICEIC assessors in the past when I have come across it and it's perfectly fine for just he line and neutral to pass through together.
I'll take your word for it on the strands showing (honestly not got good eyes tonight, gotta say Unilites are very good though), if they have been cut bad on the chap that installed it, worse still if he over tightened them and crushed the heat crimp into splaying because he didn't use a torque driver.
@@effervescence5664 I thought the same as you until I had the same conversation with my NIC assessor where he said the opposite lol.
Anyway, further down it says "The conductors of an a.c circuit installed in a ferromagnetic enclosure shall be arranged so that all line conductors and the neutral conductor, if an, and the appropriate protective conductor are within the same enclosure. Where such conductors enter a ferrous enclosure, they shall be arranged such that the conductors are only collectively surrounded by ferromagnetic material". The only exception is any addition protection (so the outside of an SWA cable).
Ah 'qualified' elecchickens! In my old house we had a bathroom water leak so I ripped up the floor & on inspecting the wiring for a downstairs ceiling rose found the downstairs lighting ring joined by twisting it together & covering each wire in paper masking tape. The house had been 'professionally rewired' about 3 years before I bought it & I'd not touched the electrics since. I contacted the company whose receipt was in all the docs I got with the house about the poor work & they basically laughed at me saying PROVE IT WAS US. Lovely. I do all my own electrics, being fully competent & aware of the regs. Part P be damned, there's no indemnity or guarantee the work a spark does just because their van has a sticker on it.
I think the same people worked on your house as worked on a school I taught at in West Newcastle (Slateyford to be precise, it's gone now). I was a physics teacher and wanted to shut the outlets off down one side of the lab to be safe, I opened the breaker that indicated that side of the lab, checked that the power was off; it wasn't. There were several breakers for different parts of the lab none of them worked. They'd wired everything through one breaker!
I was at a BAE factory and found someone wired wired 3phase stuff wrong. It was possible to get 415v between two sockets right next to each other on a workbench! That was corrected very quickly and everything else checked.
Have you considered asking the utility company to install a 100A isolator so that if you are working on the consumer unit you don't have to pull incoming 100A fuse and have to have it sealed by the elecy board
Excellent videos Brian
They did install an isolator.
the outside studio - is that the workshop? - is on that consumer unit.
if its rcbo trips, does that not potentially trip the house consumer unit rcd?
i know rcbo are supposed to isolate - but...
I thought it was better to seperate the out-buildings with a henley block, to isolate the house from the outsidfe activities?
Cheers
In residential US electrical, we use red and black for the 240VAC hot conductors, white for the neutral, and bare or green for ground (earth).
Had no idea US wiring colours were so different to UK! No wonder I've been getting confused watching US electrics vids. 😂
@@GosforthHandyman It gets worse. When it comes to running conductors inside conduits for switch legs, traveler wires... orange, purple, yellow, blue and many other colors can sometimes be seen. I am not even talking about 3 phase, either. Cheers. I like seeing how things are done in different places.
When we moved into our 1969 bungalow and wanted the consumer unit changed some sparks were saying it would need a full rewire before even coming when the CU was changed and all tested the electrician doing the testing commented that the results were better than a lot of new / nearly new builds he had tested / inspected. Totally agree that ripping out perfectly good wire just to keep the scrap man and Screwfix happy is frankly nonsensical.
Yup, totally agree and I immediately question the quality of the new install when this happens. 👍
Smart meters will go the same way as solar panels did in this video is my Friday night thought on this after drinking a bottle of wine.
Hate ours. Doesn't even work on our new provider so it's manual reads anyway. 👍😂
@@GosforthHandyman our fusebox was put in in 2004 when house was rewired if a bulb went all the lights went out but since they fitted air source in 2012 that doesn't happen anymore
Smart meters are effectively a con, perpetrated by a dysfunctional industry. The "first generation" ones "can't" be transferred between providers. I'm pretty sure they could be reprogrammed to allow that, if the industry cared.
@@RichardFarmbrough
The industry only want smart meters so they can push to charge you more at peak times. With a smart meter they know who is using what. It's got nothing to do with modernising or going green just charging you more.
The wire colours changed because if you're red/green colour blind (the most common form of colour blindness) then then red and green wires look identical... which is bad for obvious reasons.
Since when have we ever had red and solid green cores in a cable?
@@135Ops The striped earth came in 1977, it's conceivable that the solid green from before then could be in a 1920s house.
@@135Ops We had both for many years, and i still come across them now. Although the cpc is not sheathed so solid green insulation was slid over the bare ends.
That was the reason for going from solid green to green/yellow stripped CPC. 2004 colour change was harmonization with European standards.
Nonsense. The colours were changed in order to "harmonize" with the EU standard. Post Brexit should we go back to red and black? 😉
Excellent, informative video. Great!
I feel for you, for the poor experience you’ve had with Eon. I’ve had to put up with their rubbish too.
Utterly dreadful company, I would rather get my electricity from a nuclear reactor that is on the verge of a meltdown, than deal with those tossers again.
By far the worst utility company we've ever had to deal with. Will never use Eon again (didn't use them by choice, was just what the property was originally on). 👍
Of course this reactor should be far far far away :D I live in Germany an EON is the same here.
That distribution box is far newer than mine.
I still have fuse wire and fuses in my box.
I swapped supplier but nPower continued to bill me for 5 months even tho they wasnt my supplier.. Ended up blocking their payments via the bank, then nPower took a futher 6 months to reimburse me my overpayment and the money they robbed off me.
As my old uncle used to say:
Red to red
Black to Black
Blue to pieces!
Thanks for making my Friday night.. Again!
Glad you enjoyed the vid!
In USA (120V) bare or green is earth, white is neutral, black is hot and red is switched.
In 240V circuits black _and_ red are hot, white neutral and green or bare earth.
3-phase will have different colours depending upon voltage. blue, yellow & orange are commonly found in addition to black red and white.
Interesting! Wow, totally different to here. 👍
@@GosforthHandyman you have to remember that most residential wiring in the U.S. is 240V center tapped from the transformer.
So we get two legs of the sine wave that are 120v from neutral but are 240V across both legs.
240 is used for major appliances like clothes dryers, stoves, aircon and water heaters, while lights and small appliances like kettles, toasters etc usually run 120V.
Of course this means 120V wiring needs to carry twice the amperage for the same work done and therefore has to be much thicker gauge.
@@GosforthHandyman I'm envious of Germans who get 400V three phase to the home.
But it's probably best because I'd have _way_ more heavy duty shop tools in the barn if better power were available! 🤣
An RCBO is basically an MCB and an RCD combined into one unit, you would install one RCBO per circuit, so if that circuit trips its only that circuit that trips and all others remain on, it stands for "Residual current breaker with overcurrent protection" RCB-O
👍👍
Dear God Andy. That original setup is a rat's nest. I can see so much bare copper inside that CU, including on the incoming tails!!!! Given the heat in that cupboard I'm surprised the house needed storage heaters!! 😁
@24:20 80A? Wow, 200 amp is the standard here in the US.
Back in the 1920's and 1930's when America was getting electrfied and there wasn't the electrical appliances that we have now, 50 or 60 amp fuse boxes were the standard. They typically had four screw in type glass fuses. You can still find them in older houses but are considered generally unsafe.
Then breaker panels came into being in the 1950's and 1960's with 100 amp being the standard.
Now, with everything being electronic and all the appliances we use, 200 amp breaker panels is the standard.
And even sometimes that's not enough for some newly built modern houses. In that case, they typically install sub panels for the load.
At what voltage
@@andrewgarner9194 Split phase 120-0-120 so higher power devices like water heaters and cookery have a 240v supply and sockets and lights are fed at 120v
100 amp is the usual on new properties. Older houses often had 60 amp, that can usually be upgraded to 80 by a simple fuse change so that’s presumably what happened here- changing the supply cable would be horrendously expensive. Remember most of the UK had mains gas for heating so 80 or 100 amps at 230 volts will give more than sufficiently power- what would you need more than 23 kw for if you’re not using it for heat?
@Andrew Garner It comes in from the electric company on two 110/120v legs. At the service panel, each leg is connected to separate bus bars. Each bus bar is 110/120v. To get 220/240v, a heavy duty 30, 50 or 100 amp circuit breaker straddles both bus bars is used.
Typically, house voltage runs about 117-118 volts. Less than 110 volts can cause brownouts and burnout electric motors. More than 120 volts can cause power surges and fry out electronics.
Yup, bear in mind we're 230V for everything (generally). 👍
This may have been mentioned in a previous video... but OMG - somebody sprayed insulation onto the underside of the roof tiles? (26:55 in video). Anybody caught doing that should be treated with the same leniency, possibly less, than those caught applying textured ceilings.
I've had worse. A system that seemed normal but when you take out the fuse, the ground cable suddenly becomes a live wire. making every socket in the entire company building an electrical hazard. We noticed it only 6 months after buying the building. So when doing electrics in unknown places, assume the worst, making it "safe" by pulling fuses does not guarantee anything, not even the ground cables.
25:17 The separation is specified in BS7671, but for safety not signal integrity.
Got the reg. no.? Just intrigued. 👍
@@GosforthHandyman If it remember correctly 528.1. The main point is every conductor or cable shall be rated for the highest voltage present when separation is not provided.
get your local dno out to check the earth connection as the one that's on there is not meant for connection on to a lead cable.
The DNO replaced the service head. Hopefully they would have checked the earth at the same time.
@@stuartarnold9444 I would ask them to call out again as the clamp that is on your lead sheath is one that should be used for bonding the das and water pipes. we use constant tension springs or a sweated earth. The sticker on the main fuse is what the cut outs max rating is 100amps they should have added a sticker to say there is an 80a fuse installed.
It has a constant tension spring in it - looks different to normal earth clamps for gas etc. 🤔
There was no requirement for lighting to be RCD until the powers that be decided that ALL cables buried in the wall under 50mm needed 30mA RCD protection, which is pretty much all the housing stock in the UK.
and you are better off for it.
@12:24 If the new EU code excludes red electrical wiring, then why is it in the new box?
You're allowed a mix, but you need to have a sticker on the box saying that the wiring colours are mixed. All new cabling needs to be in the new colours. 👍
Those incoming cables look like they might be single insulated. This is not allowed in Australia unless it is metal armored cables.
a bad nail could put 240 volts down your data cables, thats why they should be away from them, its not about messing up the data
Not an electrician, but your tech looks similar to what we have in Australia (unsurprisingly, being the old penal colony)
We tend to have more circuits in each house, each with their own RCDs. Nowadays even lighting circuits must have their own RCD installed.
I'm glad you at minimum replaced that circuit board, and if your happy that the existing remaining electrics are safe, then there's defo no reason for a full rewire.
Cheers! Yup, nice safe baseline to start from. 👍
@gosforthhandyman - please consider using a proper voltage indicator to prove dead, especially on a crazy mess like this. The indicator pens are useful, but really should not be used to confirm a circuit is dead.
great video, I found a fused spur junction box under the floorboards in my house, what was their plan if that fuse blew?
$$$$ for the service call lol
lol ive worked for a few sparks(USA) that did same thing with hidden j boxes
At least they taped it up, I've done the same when I didn't have a jbox at the time.
RCBOs are called GFIs (Ground Fault Interrupter) here in the US.
👍
No, light bulbs blowing doesn't contribute to RCD tripping. Originally, in Australia, there were no requirements for RCD's on lighting as they were not considered to be a problem. Yes, yes, I know they are of course, so now all circuits require an RCD including fixed AC's, ovens etc.
The colors were harmonized all over Europe. They used colors not used before so there was no confusion anywhere. Germans used to have red as earth. You can see an obvious problem in importing German products to UK.
An RCBO is just an MCB and RCD in a single device, it doesn’t do anything more or less. Main advantage is that when it pops due to an earth fault, you already know which circuit is problematic, compared to when the RCD pops and you need to start finding which circuit is actually faulty.
Do you know why it tripped?
@@okaro6595 depending on the model they’ll have different positions depending on the fault, some might not turn on without tuning them off first after an RCD trip, but will turn on just fine after an over-current event.
Good Video Gos, Just an observation... why is there 2 No exposed bus bars on the left hand side of the DB when it was previously energised ?
Thls house would have had electrics from new. My grandma lived in a similar aged house in South Gosforth overlooking the railway. It had electric from new. My present house was built around 1912 and built with gas lighting but was converted to electricity in the 1920's we think. Supply used to come in via overhead pole. Still does but now comes out ot the ground up the pole then down the pole back underground to the new meter box. Last pole in the street supplying about eight houses. We found an old electricity supply company label on the wooden board that everything was mounted on and we still have some defunct remnants of lead cable in the loft.
That is a safety fail in that new CB panel @ 28:20
Get insulation boots over those spare busbars or install spare breakers.
Black and Red swaped to Blue and Brown so everyone could see a difference between them - even if they were colourblind. There is a colourblind state where they are virtually identical - thus dangerous.
"Colour blindness affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women (0.5%) in the world."
I worked with a guy who was red green colour blind and one of my best mates is pink/blue colourblind.
Interesting! Although I still find blue / brown a bizarre choice... but looking in to it Cen didn't have much option without making things more dangerous for certain countries. 👍
in Iceland, before the current brown, blue, yellow-green standard, the colors used to be black, blue, yellow green.
before that,
in very old houses that you could find red live and blue or black neutral and white earth.
sometimes if there was a shortage of imported material, the electricians of the past made up their own colour scheme with what they had.