Electrics setup all strange after electrician has been out. Riddle inside (stiff drink needed)...

[stillp]

My wife had fitted a light fitting in the living room. He did [something] with the wiring. He said she hadn't done anything wrong, but there was some sort of wiring in there that "wasn't quite right" which he sorted out but obviously hasn't fixed the problem.

That's a bit puzzling. So it wasn't wrong, but wasn't right either?

 

[Echo the husky]

It must be quite a fault if the location of the problem hasn't even been confirmed yet!

 

[PBC_1966]

Do you think the boss knows what he's doing or guessing?

By the sound of it so far, probably the latter.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Maybe he does know what he is doing, but does not have a clue what the person he employed did.

 

[Mr. Clueless]

Who knows. I wasn't there with him so while i trust my wife, i still only have second hand information to go on & i wasn't able to question him. She's generally the type who lets them get on with their work. I'm pretty much the annoying type who likes to know what's going on. For various reasons. I'm paying your wages, this is my house, i want to be sure you know what you're doing (or at least can convince me you do), and finally i just like to learn. So i will question you But i wasn't there.

All i know is he said he needs more time to fix up the problem, so we shall see. I'll give the guy a chance & see if the issue gets fixed.

 

[sparkwright]

It's a shame you have to wait so long for him to come back.

Even though the electrician is satisfied the fault is not caused by them, I still think I'd be making a special effort to resolve this.

It's a bit of a coincidence these lighting faults appeared after the electrician initially left though.

You've not had any light switches etc disturbed for decorating etc have you?

 

[securespark]

Is it possible this problem has always been there, but only noticed it now?

For example, if a switch is incorrectly wired up, and it takes a certain sequence of switch-throwing to show up a fault?

I would be looking for a six inch nail through a bunch of cables under the new floor! Smoking alarm panel is the big clue …..

deadshort.....you weren't suggesting a deadshort, by any chance?

 

[Mr. Clueless]

It's a shame you have to wait so long for him to come back.

This is in part due to ourselves to be honest.

We are now back at work & we work similar hours, so we are only available weekday evenings (good luck getting a tradesman to come out in the late evening) or weekends. He can't do 2nd January as he's away on holiday (Fair enough) so we're booked in for the 16th which isn't too much of a wait considering the only other real date is the 9th.

I know what you're saying though - it's still a few weeks, but like i say, this is largely due to us. I guess we could try get someone to house-sit, but it's best one of us being here ourselves because if anything went wrong & let's say i came back here & stated it (or just said to anyone in general) - i could almost guarantee the response would be, well you should've been at the house yourselves.

You've not had any light switches etc disturbed for decorating etc have you?

Not for decorating. Although the builders did have the light switches off as part of the tanking process, but that's all it was - unscrewed & then re-screwed.

securespark - yes it is possible of course. We've never sat there with the fusebox sitting & flicking switches really. Like my wife said, if she's needed to kill the downstairs lights, it'll have been daylight with no need for lights to be on, so the lights probably would've been in the 'correct' order & not the funny/strange setup order, so we'll have known no different.
Perhaps it was only chance that made us notice the problem - by the iffy switch being on?


Although i do wonder why the electrician believes it's the switch for the diner (extension) that is located in the living room which is causing the fault - when it seems to depend on which switch is 'on' for the landing light as to whether downstairs can be killed properly or not.

 

[sparkwright]

Well if you're happy to wait, and the alarm problem has been explained, I'm sure this will be cleared up.

Keep us posted, it's always of great interest to us all.

 

[DaveHerns]

The boss needs to get the saboteur sparkie back on site to say what he/she did in every room . And I think you should video their visit!

 

[Mr. Clueless]

To be fair the original electrician only ever went in 2 rooms. The kitchen to kill some switch/es & the living room to lay cable for more sockets.

But you raise an interesting point which brings me to this question.....

Some of you are clearly either in or have been in the trade. If a customer said to you ......... hey i don't trust you one bit & i want to video your every move in this house (i assume the progression would be solicitors & the like Dave?), then what would you guys respond to this??

Just curious after what Dave said there.



Slightly off topic - i work closely with builders. Our bosses have told us the customers don't serve themselves, we have to serve them. But if there's 5 customers & 3 members of staff then there's a problem. Someone is going to have to wait & i'm sure you know how patient a builder can be.
So we asked a few of the more approachable ones - what would you do in said scenario & we asked you to wait to be served.
Those we asked all had the same response. The second word was "OFF"

 

[sparkwright]

Videoing will not get the best out of someone.

The last thing someone needs during a baffling job is someone filming their every move.

How did we get to this?

Unless an electrician agrees to take part in an educational video doing routine tasks, he will otherwise tell you to get stuffed.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I guess we could try get someone to house-sit

I bet you'd find willing volunteers here, who would love to have a talk with your electrician(s).

 

[DaveHerns]

Maybe the videoing is a bad idea but you need someone else to witness conversation so if it ends up in Court , the electrician can't deny what he said. Maybe the moral of the story is never let anyone work in your house unattended, doing this got me a toilet 3" from where it should be and a patio where the levels are well out.

 

[Mr. Clueless]

I agree with you.

This is why we took time off work for the majority of the work being carried out & largely it paid off because we had to step in a few times.

We learned this lesson from the very first time we had someone out & basically just left them to it as we were working.

Story short, the end result was a huge learning curve & we had to threaten solicitors & had a real fight getting our money back. In the end we got £500 of a £1600 payout, which was more than i thought we'd get so we had to settle for that (we couldn't afford to go through with the solicitor route at the quoted £209/hr).