Trissle, that is a really nice house, completely full of character. You deservedly are very pleased to be living there.
I’m sorry if this message comes across as combative, but I would not be able to walk away with a clear conscience unless I posted this.
In 2004 I lost a very dear friend to a house fire. His wife was awakened by the smoke alarm and after failing to wake or move her husband she escaped and raised the alarm. When the extraordinarily brave neighbour rescued my friend however he was already dead, having succumbed to the poisonous smoke while asleep. The fire itself gutted the home’s kitchen and utility rooms, and other than smoke damage the rest of the property was recovered.
The cause of the fire was determined to be an overloaded ring main in the kitchen. His wife had left one ring on the ceramic hob on by accident and during the night it had caused the cable in the wall to melt, caught a wall cabinet on fire and spread. Only around 2amps of loading was enough to do this because the ring main – supplying the entire house – was overloaded. Every time they had used the kettle or cooked a Sunday roast that same cable would have been heating up and had they kept the loading for any period of time it could have melted. In this instance it was a simple mistake and bad fortune.
Surely an overloaded ring main is a problem that can happen anywhere? No one is to blame (except the designers who allowed it to get close to capacity)? My friend wasn’t using any arc welders or industrial motors; he was living with normal household electrical appliances. The average load on the ring main would have been around 1-2 amps, peaking to a maximum of 15 during heavy cooking sessions. Why would this overload a 20 amp cable configured as a 32 amp ring main?
The reason why was twofold. Firstly there was a junction box buried in the plaster in the kitchen that had a high resistance joint. This might have been because it was not tightened properly in the first place, or it may have been that over the years that warming and cooling of the cable had caused enough expansion and contraction to work the connection loose. Whatever did it, it had formed a high resistance joint. This in turn caused the insulation on the cable entering the junction box to melt, and caused the fatal fire.
The second reason why this particular cable was overloaded at that specific point was because the ring main was in fact a large radial circuit. This was only identified when the house was being rewired to remove any other hidden junctions. The reason this was not a functional ring main as it was designed to be was because at some point in the past a previous owner had extended the ring main in the living room to add a new socket for a television. The ring was split at an existing socket and then run diagonally to the new socket. The same previous owner had then installed some shelves and drilled straight through one of the two cables, severing one the ring conductors, and, because the socket they extended from was the last in the ring, they ensured that every amp of electricity any appliance in the house used would have passed along that high resistance joint buried in the kitchen wall.
Building regulations wouldn’t have saved my friend, or prevented the scars left in the lives of his family and friends, because the previous owners of the house – who killed him – would probably not have known about them. When I say they killed him I do not mean they did so deliberately, as I am sure like yourself they were simply renovating the property as best as they could, and I personally hold them no ill will. However you have now been made aware of the risk by previous posters and I really must urge you to please reconsider your view that the important safety rule stating “an electrical installation must be designed to be safe and not to cause injury to others” is not “a bit interfering”. The rules are there to protect lives and property. They are largely written retrospectively when it has been determined that they could have saved either.
Looking at your recent photos I can see no reason why safe zones cannot be used. Bizarrely it was not even more convenient to ignore them. Cables can be routed horizontally at ceiling level and then vertically to the accessories. This work needs to be rectified now. I appreciate that this was all done in 2009 and you have since covered and decorated over these cables, but they need to be exposed and rerouted. Cables should be replaced unless extensions can be made at accessories. The only time it is permissible to avoid safe zones is if the cables are in earthed metal conduit, or of sufficient depth, and even then in your cases photographed above no sane electrician would install them out of zone even if they met those conditions. It was actually more effort to install them as they have been than to have done it properly.
As plastic conduit was used you can leave them in the wall and install new drops to the accessories, pulling the old cables out of the old drops from above. Your T off to the fireplace needs an accessory fitted at the junction. If you carefully excavate the wall at that location you could fit a double accessory plate and place all of the cables in zone in one go without further work. Your socket on the red wall can be routed straight down in the corner as the original clearly was and then taken horizontally to the socket. The damage to decorations will be minimal in those two cases but the risk by doing nothing is serious and should not be ignored. A fire would destroy your wallpaper anyway.
You mentioned you had an electrician carry out this work for you. If this is correct you must not pay them any more money and they must be reported to your local authority. You can recover some of the costs of the remedial work through the small claims court if the electrician refuses to rectify at his cost. Please do not leave your, and other people’s lives, at risk. Please do the right thing.
I’m sorry if this message comes across as combative, but I would not be able to walk away with a clear conscience unless I posted this.
In 2004 I lost a very dear friend to a house fire. His wife was awakened by the smoke alarm and after failing to wake or move her husband she escaped and raised the alarm. When the extraordinarily brave neighbour rescued my friend however he was already dead, having succumbed to the poisonous smoke while asleep. The fire itself gutted the home’s kitchen and utility rooms, and other than smoke damage the rest of the property was recovered.
The cause of the fire was determined to be an overloaded ring main in the kitchen. His wife had left one ring on the ceramic hob on by accident and during the night it had caused the cable in the wall to melt, caught a wall cabinet on fire and spread. Only around 2amps of loading was enough to do this because the ring main – supplying the entire house – was overloaded. Every time they had used the kettle or cooked a Sunday roast that same cable would have been heating up and had they kept the loading for any period of time it could have melted. In this instance it was a simple mistake and bad fortune.
Surely an overloaded ring main is a problem that can happen anywhere? No one is to blame (except the designers who allowed it to get close to capacity)? My friend wasn’t using any arc welders or industrial motors; he was living with normal household electrical appliances. The average load on the ring main would have been around 1-2 amps, peaking to a maximum of 15 during heavy cooking sessions. Why would this overload a 20 amp cable configured as a 32 amp ring main?
The reason why was twofold. Firstly there was a junction box buried in the plaster in the kitchen that had a high resistance joint. This might have been because it was not tightened properly in the first place, or it may have been that over the years that warming and cooling of the cable had caused enough expansion and contraction to work the connection loose. Whatever did it, it had formed a high resistance joint. This in turn caused the insulation on the cable entering the junction box to melt, and caused the fatal fire.
The second reason why this particular cable was overloaded at that specific point was because the ring main was in fact a large radial circuit. This was only identified when the house was being rewired to remove any other hidden junctions. The reason this was not a functional ring main as it was designed to be was because at some point in the past a previous owner had extended the ring main in the living room to add a new socket for a television. The ring was split at an existing socket and then run diagonally to the new socket. The same previous owner had then installed some shelves and drilled straight through one of the two cables, severing one the ring conductors, and, because the socket they extended from was the last in the ring, they ensured that every amp of electricity any appliance in the house used would have passed along that high resistance joint buried in the kitchen wall.
Building regulations wouldn’t have saved my friend, or prevented the scars left in the lives of his family and friends, because the previous owners of the house – who killed him – would probably not have known about them. When I say they killed him I do not mean they did so deliberately, as I am sure like yourself they were simply renovating the property as best as they could, and I personally hold them no ill will. However you have now been made aware of the risk by previous posters and I really must urge you to please reconsider your view that the important safety rule stating “an electrical installation must be designed to be safe and not to cause injury to others” is not “a bit interfering”. The rules are there to protect lives and property. They are largely written retrospectively when it has been determined that they could have saved either.
Looking at your recent photos I can see no reason why safe zones cannot be used. Bizarrely it was not even more convenient to ignore them. Cables can be routed horizontally at ceiling level and then vertically to the accessories. This work needs to be rectified now. I appreciate that this was all done in 2009 and you have since covered and decorated over these cables, but they need to be exposed and rerouted. Cables should be replaced unless extensions can be made at accessories. The only time it is permissible to avoid safe zones is if the cables are in earthed metal conduit, or of sufficient depth, and even then in your cases photographed above no sane electrician would install them out of zone even if they met those conditions. It was actually more effort to install them as they have been than to have done it properly.
As plastic conduit was used you can leave them in the wall and install new drops to the accessories, pulling the old cables out of the old drops from above. Your T off to the fireplace needs an accessory fitted at the junction. If you carefully excavate the wall at that location you could fit a double accessory plate and place all of the cables in zone in one go without further work. Your socket on the red wall can be routed straight down in the corner as the original clearly was and then taken horizontally to the socket. The damage to decorations will be minimal in those two cases but the risk by doing nothing is serious and should not be ignored. A fire would destroy your wallpaper anyway.
You mentioned you had an electrician carry out this work for you. If this is correct you must not pay them any more money and they must be reported to your local authority. You can recover some of the costs of the remedial work through the small claims court if the electrician refuses to rectify at his cost. Please do not leave your, and other people’s lives, at risk. Please do the right thing.
