Drilled through cable.....

[clueless1]

In fixing a kitchen cabinet to the wall, drilled through the cable supplying the downstairs sockets and the boiler.....

How can this be fixed? N.B. The cable is behind the plaster on a brick party wall.

Thank you in advance for your help.....

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Best option - replace the entire length of cable

2nd best option - use crimps (applied with a proper ratchet crimper, not a cheapie squeeze'n'hope car electrical one) or soldered joints to repair the cable.

Each repaired core should be covered with heat-shrink tubing, and then the whole area wrapped in self-amalgamating tape in order to waterproof it.

Another plan might be to join it by putting a socket or FCU on the wall, or by using choc-block inside a flush box with a blank plate on it. This may affect where you can have the wall cabinet(s), but then you may need to rethink this anyway, given the presence of buried cables, and where you can drill holes..

Out of interest - did you drill through the cable because it was not in one of the permitted zones, or because you didn't know what the permitted zones are?

 

[HandyJon]

Short term measure to keep your boiler going in thie cold weather till a proper fix is done is to get a short length of 2.5mm T&E and using a terminal strips connect up the two ends to the short length. Now go to the shops and get bits necessary to fix it properly.

What you do next depends on how the cable is run in the wall. Is it in a conduit or just plastered in? If plastered in you'll have to pull the cable out of the wall and replaster afterwards. The aim is pull the two lengths of cut cable together so that you can join them with a crimp. Get a proper ratcheting crimper to do the job. After crimping wrap the lot in insulating tape and then a bit of self-amalgamating tape and then it can be plastered over.

Alternatively if the joint is going to be beind the cabinet and the cabinet can be easily removed from the wall then you could do the join using a 30A junction box if you've got space as well. Make sure you leave a note about the junction box for future electricians as it will be accesible but not in an obvious place!

 

[clueless1]

I don't know where the premitted zones are! It wasn't actually me who did it but I'm guessing that the guy who did doesn't know about permitted zones either......

 

[slippyr4]

a nice, very brief guide to where cables ought to be located is provided by the niceic here

 

[clueless1]

Thanks for help everyone.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I don't know where the premitted zones are!

In that case - read these:

http://www.niceic.org.uk/downloads/C5-43.pdf

http://www.niceic.org.uk/downloads/concealedcables.pdf

It wasn't actually me who did it but I'm guessing that the guy who did doesn't know about permitted zones either......

In that case, buy one of these:

http://ukptocs.bosch-pt.com/boptocs...6A0C02F?division=gw&ccat_id=9706&prod_id=9442