We were called to a new customers house as he had been receiving electrical shocks all over his house and finally decided to call when he was cleaning some black mould from behind the washing machine with water and bleach. He grabbed a pipe with a wet hand and received a really nasty electrical shock.

When we arrived we tested between the neutral of a nearby socket and the pipe work, 240 Volts was present ! this was repeated around the house at taps and radiators all were showing a lethal 240 Volts.

After many hours of testing the fault was located in the hob. Whoever had installed it had pulled the earth wire so tight that it had eventually pierced the live insulation and made contact, thereby making all exposed metalwork in the house live. Normally the protective equipment would have operated and cut off the supply. However the wiring had not been tested for years and the old earth leakage circuit breaker was non operational and the earth rod was made of an old steel pole which had long since rusted away.

The owner of the property was extremely lucky.

If you move into a new house and you are at all unhappy with the electrics get them checked out.

When we were called to install a 9.5kw Sauna in a garage we obviously checked that the garage supply was able to take the new load. The garage was already supplying a swimming pool heater drawing in the region of 22amps.

The garage was fed via a steel wired armoured cable which was too small and we could not locate any circuit breakers labelled up "garage" in the main house. The existing cable from the garage was physically traced under a path down the side of the house and up the house wall for about a couple of feet. We then went in the house and in the same location as where the cable entered the house was a socket and a fused spur. As a fused spur is designed to operate at a maximum of 13 amps and the garage was already drawing 22amps the plot thickened !

The fuse holder was removed ( please see image ) and someone had removed the 13amp fuse and rapped what looked like 30 amp fuse wire around the contacts ! As you can see the holder was running extremely hot and had started to char.

When the owner of the house was asked who installed the existing garage supply he assured us that it was the previous owner ( well he would say that wouldn't he ! )

This image is a good example of how not to connect a junction box. This junction box was removed from under some loft insulation in a house that we were re-wiring.