Bodges, scrimping and Friday afternoon jobs

[conny]

In my first house that I bought I couldn't find the fuse for the downstairs lights. Old rewireable board with 2 white fuses carriers, (5A lights), 1 blue, (15A didn't appear to supply anything) and 2 red, (30A 1 x ring circuit for whole house and 1 x cooker socket).
Finally found out the lights were somehow connected to the ring main but, search as I may, couldn't find where. Then some time later I was ripping down the lower ceilings when I discovered a 13A single socket screwed to the side of a floor joist few by 2.5sqmm T+E cable. Wondering what the plug was feeding I pulled it out and the downstairs lights went off! Plugged it back in and they came on again. Problem solved and re-wire needed. LOL

 

[Brigadier]

Not exactly bodges (I don't think, but stand to be corrected), but as I work my way around my house, I find more and more electrics where the cables are as tight as bow strings.

An absolute pita when you're struggling in the half-light, knees killing, fiddling around in the gap under a floorboard and the sodding end won't quite reach the terminal

 

[cwhaley]

Not exactly bodges (I don't think, but stand to be corrected), but as I work my way around my house, I find more and more electrics where the cables are as tight as bow strings.

An absolute pita when you're struggling in the half-light, knees killing, fiddling around in the gap under a floorboard and the sodding end won't quite reach the terminal

I find the same issue, tends to be with lamps. In the front room there are only 3 sockets -- two at the TV in the corner and one next to the settee (in opposing corners of the room). The lamps need to of course be in the corners with no sockets so I had to extend the wire on both of them and run under the wooden flooring. Good job I'd left expansion gaps around the edge so I could remove boards!

 

[Mottie]

When we moved house in the early seventies, for the first time ever, we had a garden with a lawn. My Dad bought a self built electric lawnmower. It was basically a standard push mower with a motor bolted on it connected to the rotating cutter by a car fan belt. Trouble was, the cable coming out of the motor went to a single socket outlet mounted to the handle. No on/off switch. Just plug and go. This meant that the extension cable had a three pin socket at either end! Anyway, my dad told me to plug it in in the house, I voiced my concern about the now live three pin plug at the other end, he said 'don’t be silly', touched the plug and got thrown across the lawn. He still kept it but made sure it was plugged in at the mower end before plugging in to the house!

 

[JBR]

When we moved house in the early seventies, for the first time ever, we had a garden with a lawn. My Dad bought a self built electric lawnmower. It was basically a standard push mower with a motor bolted on it connected to the rotating cutter by a car fan belt. Trouble was, the cable coming out of the motor went to a single socket outlet mounted to the handle. No on/off switch. Just plug and go. This meant that the extension cable had a three pin socket at either end! Anyway, my dad told me to plug it in in the house, I voiced my concern about the now live three pin plug at the other end, he said 'don’t be silly', touched the plug and got thrown across the lawn. He still kept it but made sure it was plugged in at the mower end before plugging in to the house!

The appropriately named 'widow maker'.

 

[Min]

That's (potentially) shocking! . . . . . . Reminds me of when I bought a record player off a man who owned a pub -- couldn't find a spare socket for it so he used match sticks and pushed the bare wire into a socket.

That was standard practice in the early 1960's. Can remember my mum going loopy at my dad for doing that with a lamp!

 

[Min]

My aunt had a shower put into a downstairs bathroom in her old stone cottage. Very smart, her pride and joy . . . till one day a tiny (accidental) tap from my knee made the tiled wall cave in. Turns out the builder had used plasterboard to square off the wall, and tiled over it.

 

[cwhaley]

There was a Public Information Film (PIF) for this in the early '70s too...

 

[Ian H]

I saw this on an advert for a building company and thought it looked a bodge job:

 

[Donkmeister]

Various bodges / shoddy work in my house. Firstly the electrics... The previous owners told me it had a full rewire a few years before, but when I moved in I realised there were very few sockets despite the "full rewire". When the time came to add a few sockets I saw my first ever VIR cable, complete with perishing rubber. The full rewire was simply a new CU and a pack of lies. So, ended up buying BS7671 and starting a rewire.
Later, removing an old disused bathroom I found the walls had a very unstable coating of browning or bonding, with tiles over the top. Made it easy to remove the tiles but meant more work for the plasterer (and expense for me) to redo the wall with a coat of sand/cement.
Then there was the garden where all the flowerbeds had been "improved" by using a membrane of bin-liners covered in gravel. Great, until I wanted to dig up a dead shrub and found the plastic degrading and the gravel mixing with the soil.
Garden brickwork made of the cheapest bricks, so started spalling a year after I moved in. Unfortunately neighbour is now using that wall to retain his landscaping (!!) so I can see a joint project to build a retaining wall in the near future.
Why do we bother when others just bodge?
In fairness, the shed they put up far outlived the new one I put in.

 

[Brigadier]

Can't claim this, just saw it on the 'web

 

[SUNRAY]

Found this one in an farm house, a basin had been installed a couple of floors up with a water heaterView media item 13508In case the pic is not clear enough thats a stuffing gland into the tee and the cable is water cooled. Only discovered because the wall behing the basin was always wet.

Can't claim this, just saw it on the 'web

 

[SUNRAY]

Upstairs wall (the tall one in the stairwell) entirely made of an old shed.....stripped off the loose pb to reveal 2 T+G shed sides, loosely held in place by a couple of nails. They looked good enought to repurpose as well, a shed. Apparently the cottage had been a one storey hovel, and the previous farmer had decided to extend upwards. No wonder the doors never closed, the windows rattled and there was not a straight wall in the place. Customer asked me to leave them be, and pb over them again.

Many years ago a work colleague made the decision to knock out the wall between kitchen and dining room, all the calculations were done and a suitably sized RSJ was delivered to the house. A number of us turned up suitably adorned with big hammers, acrow props and some decent timbers.

The wall sounded hollow, hit it with a hammer and knocked a hole through the single layer of PB. it was very simply held in place by screws into the back of the kitchen units and coving on both sides onto the ceiling.

 

[JohnD]

In case the pic is not clear enough

you're welcome.

 

[SUNRAY]

View attachment 191204

you're welcome.

Well thank for buggering up my efforts. I'd deliberately put it in with the pictures the right way up.
Like this:View media item 13508So to clarify the valve is in the horizontal pipe, the stuffing gland is at the bottom of the vertical riser which goes straight up from the cellar/undercroft [where pic is taken].