Hi, thanks all.
Had a weird power cut a few weeks ago, lights flickered on and off for about a min before power went out. One of my neighbours lost theirs, the shop a few doors away lost 1/2 of their lights, and it seemed to affect random houses up and down the road.
It was fixed about 5am (as got woken up by TV coming on) but my meter (economy 7 prepayment) was now blank.
Phoned up EDF, they currently don't do smart meters for economy 7 prepayment, and as I had electricity, I wasn't classed as an emergency, and they were very short of repayment meters and earliest they could come was 3rd Dec (this was on 25th October). I asked about my bills during that period, and they replied that as I was on a prepayment meter, I would get free electric until it was replaced.
Which was very nice except it turned really cold, had an oil radiator on in the living room all day to keep one room nice, but the meter didn't switch to economy 7 hence my storage heaters didn't come on. Still, free electric, I'm not complaining.
Around 8am today my electric went out, had a look at the meter, it was blank, but could hear a buzzing from the old big metal relay thingy.
Phoned EDF up, they said they would have someone within 3 hrs.
Phoned 3 1/2 hrs later, they apologised, put me on hold, then said the company that replaces the meter cant get the guy to answer his phone, but I'm definitely on his list, then said they would raise an enquiry into the time and I might be libel for compensation (£30 I believe) which is nice.
Guy turns up, takes a look at the wiring, said he's not happy with it or the old contactor and said while it might be OK, he isn't going to change the meter only to find out that's the contactors also bad, so he put in a different meter with a built in contactor. He removed the old one, replaced the two old chunky sealed black fuses with modern ones and replaced all the meter tails into the fuse box and into the sealed fuses with new blue and brown cables that I think are a lot thicket than what was there already.
He did a lot of work, and did a very neat and tidy job, and put a test plug in a socket to check all was OK
But he said he cant touch my fusebox, I need to get someone else in there, and it has 16mm tails and a 100A fuse, and one had a part with only single insulation showing.
I asked him if it was safe, I got the impression reading between the lines that he was saying he has to report it (took pics) and while it might be safe, it isn't up to current standards and as I've had a warning, if there was say an electrical fire, the insurance company could use it as an excuse not to pay out.
All electric house. Economy 7 storage heaters on different fusebox.
Main fusebox has immersion heater (on overnight only, megaflow unit that stays hot all day) , towel rail in bathroom (on for a couple of hrs a day) , my workshop (on non RCD side as has it's own fusebox, biggest thing in there is a small lathe) and everything else is the usual cooker, kettle, TV, PC etc.
Showers mains fed pressure via megaflow etc.
Of course the next question someones going to ask is who on earth changed the fusebox without changing the tails. On that question, I'm not saying a word
I will get someone in for a quote
The only odd possible coincidence is that the landing light bulb had gone when the power finally came back, had to change the bulb (it might have been on this morning when the power went out) . In the past when it had the old style bulbs, if it blew, it would often trip the RCD. This bulb was a modern 6 watt LED
