Consumer Unit Replacement

[Gazzer23]

Thanks guys I appreciate all your replies, it was what I thought but anyway I need to get it sorted so that its safe for my family and for the next person who lives here once I sell my flat in a year or two time.

Another clue was when he went to cut the conduit with an angle grinder he placed the conduit directly on my carpet and started cutting it, so I gave him a block of wood to put it on so he wouldn't damage my carpet.

You wouldn't believe the way they worked, they threw everything in a great big mess on my carpet, the dust sheet was further away and every time he needed a screwdriver or something they then had to look through the mess to find it.

If I want to put new conduit down for the ring mains rewire job then because my floor boards are only about 5 cm off the concrete floor does the conduit have to be metal to protect the cabling or is plastic ok as protected by a mcb ? as i read in the spec anything less than 5cm has to be protective.

I will post what I found in my kitchen which was done by a previous guy for the previous owner of the flat.
multiple circuits going to the kitchen and all a mess.

 

[RF Lighting]

Where do you live? I’ll come and fix it for you. I enjoy a challenge and this certainly fits the bill.

I’m finding it hard to understand how anyone could leave a job in that state.

 

[Gazzer23]

Thanks for the offer but London is a bit far for you I think.
I am not a Electrician and don't pretend to be but I know a bit about electricity as I did an Electrical and Electronics Engineering degree a long long time ago although I never really liked all the 3 phase motors stuff as I was always more of a digital electronics guy
But still I do find it all very interesting and realise a lot of the skill is understanding the regulations and applying them to which I know very little about.

Here is what I found the other day when checking the wiring in my kitchen behind the cupboards.

20171117_161817

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

This following one worries me as it shows they just buried the cables below the tiling in the kitchen. I know its probably obvious its there as vertical wiring but even so I am not sure that is allowed ?

20171117_154451

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

The following one shows the cable going up at the back of the sock just below the tiles.

20171117_163507

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

This last one has me very curious as when I looked at it with an endoscope tube thingy I could see 2 red wires and one blue wire going down one conduit which strikes me as weird for ring mains wiring ?

20180222_164427

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

 

[Gazzer23]

by the way the kitchen wiring already existed and has nothing to do with the guy who put in my new Consumer unit.

I bought a socket tester and used it to trace out which socket is connected to which circuit and got the following.
Have you ever seen a kitchen wired like that before ?

Floorplan

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

Cu

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

 

[bernardgreen]

the kitchen wiring already existed and has nothing to do with the guy who put in my new Consumer unit.

He should have at least tested and inspected it BEFORE changing the consumer unit. Then you would have been made awae of the various "irregularities" and potential hazards in your home

 

[Gazzer23]

mwatsonxx and Adam_151 I only just seen your replies, missed them out earlier, thank you they are very helpful.
The steel conduit actually has small sections that are unscrewable on the top section so I could remove the cut off sections and replace with the knock ons (which are fab never seen them in all my research) and use flexible conduit as suggested so it goes in the knock outs correctly and flush.
I don't think the guy knew about IP4X judging by his work

The conduit are of two sizes I measured using a bit of paper around the outside to measure the circumference and then divided by PI to get the diameter

54mm circ = 17.2mm diameter and 63mm circ = 20.05mm diameter. I am guessing the 17.2mm diameter is 5/8" conduit ?
I can't source anything for this smaller conduit which is what most of the top conduits are.

Look at the edges on that cut off piece of conduit.

20180223_152704

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

20180223_152714

• Gazzer23
• 25 Feb 2018

 

[RF Lighting]

I'm happy to travel to London I do plenty of work there!

I'm not a fan of knock on fittings especially when you are relying on them for earth continuity. As a compromise you could maybe use conlok fittings, but the proper way to repair this would be to replace the butchered conduit with new pieces of threaded steelwork.

Looking to the age of the installation, I'd imagine that the conduit will be imperial. From your measurements it would suggest you have 3/8" and 1/2" conduits, but from your original pictures, I think they appear to be more like 1/2" and 3/4" which would be much more common to come across.

 

[mfarrow]

Just polish up the conduit and use some BS951 connectors. But get continuity checked too to ensure earth reaches the extremities of the conduit system.

 

[securespark]

In the good old days, when I was installing galv & BE in commercial installs (funnily enough in Leeds!!), where the conduit was used as the cpc (which was pretty much everywhere), we checked the integrity of the install using a high current tester to ensure good continuity between joints.

If you got a bad joint, you could hear a sizzle like bacon cooking!

Dunno whether these beasts still exist or whether installers just run in a cpc with the live conductors.

 

[Gazzer23]

Funny you should mention that because the other day I was watching a PAT video for a training course and they pumped 25A down the earth and demonstrated a weak earth connection melt it was interesting as I didn't realise they did that but as they said its better to have a problem while testing rather than later on.

Here is the link https://www.pat-testing-course.com/pat-training-dvd.php click on the Earth bonding test link

 

[ban-all-sheds]

AIUI, high current testing like that is no longer required.

I might remember reading that it is actually forbidden, or I might be making that up, or if I did read it it might be that the person who wrote it made it up.

 

[Gazzer23]

Yes I now what you mean its hard to know what is fact these days with so much information and a large proportion being mis-information.
I have to triple check everything.

 

[OwainDIYer]

we checked the integrity of the install using a high current tester to ensure good continuity between joints. ....
Dunno whether these beasts still exist

Ductor testers
https://www.test-meter.co.uk/micro-ohmmeters-ductors/

Rather expensive to buy, but can be hired

The tragedy is that what looks like a well-done period conduit installation has been wrecked by a numpty with less electrical ability than a PG Tips chimpanzee when with a bit of thought and consideration it wouldn't have been difficult to make a proper job of it. I'd never worked with conduit before buying my flat but have done an ok job of taking out old single socket boxes and fitting new doubles to the existing conduit reusing the bushes and locknuts. A bit of fettling and a nice new steel CU could have been flushed onto that existing conduit and plastered up.

 

[securespark]

What are these people thinking?

 

[Gazzer23]

yes it is a tragedy and I threw away all the ends of the cut off conduit and bushes etc as I was so stressed about what they had done and just wanted to clear up the great big mess they had made on my carpet. I realise now what a big mistake it was.
The conduit that has been cut down can be unscrewed as lucky they had small sections screwed into the main conduit so I think I could get some made up but the problem is the alignment so maybe some of that flexible steel conduit to join on and go cleanly into the CU.
The CU needs to be moved down about an inch first though because of the non alignment and big gap with the ring main conduit that comes in from below.
I am going to see where the conduit initially goes from the CU and see if I can pull through some new wires but need to check they don't get damaged.
If it is the point i suspect it is in the kitchen with all the black tape then it is very near and should be doable but I don't know what to do about this ?

20180226_215809

• Gazzer23
• 26 Feb 2018

As the wires are just under the tile it seems and I don't really want to have to re-tile the whole kitchen
Oh joy the pain just never ends.