The age old electricity question?!?!?!

:DThats what the concrete is for, people like you pro.:D

Lets face it, if its amoured and you stick your fork or spade into it, your not likely to trust it anymore.
I know I wouldn't.

 

generaly accepted to be Black.

but it should also have warning tape buried above

 

and sand

 

think you will find sand is not a requirement

 

Ocasionally Ive had to do trenches for new supply cables from the road to the house. The Elec board and electrician have always specified it or they wont connect up.

Always done it with domestic cables aswell, guess its just good practice.

 

What a moronic comment, If someone is looking for a water pipe, finds one buried in the garden they will switch it off (the water!) and cut through it. The regs are there wholly because of people doing this sort of idiotic thing. If you are burying electricity bury it in anything if you can't be bothered to do it properly but don't do it in a water pipe/gas pipe or anything else that people are likely to look for at any time in the future.

It may be your house now but nobody knows what the future holds and if a future occupier or builder does some work and ends up dead the responsibilty lies with the moron who buried the cable!

 

With all due respect, what did you use to test the circuits?

Just because it works, does not mean it is safe. Not by a long shot. I could post many pictures here that I have taken over the years, showing the results of unsafe electrical work. It worked, but it was not safe!

Following are just a few examples of electrical work done unsafely. Remember, electrocution or electric shock are not the only consequences of poor electrical work. Fire can result too.

Overloaded socket:



Ordinary socket outside:



Consumer unit overloaded:



Fuse attached to that circuit:



Socket in a bathroom:



Socket with no earth connection whatsoever- that earth wire just connects to the box:



Socket wired with live to the earth pin (fixing screws live to the touch):



And finally: one that will appeal to gardeners!

Plastic flowerpot covering 50W downlighter. Heat rises, doesn't it?.......:

 

That's why Part P of the building regulations had to be introduced - to stop cowboys, any electrical work in a garden requires notification to the LBA under penalty of prosecuition, if there is any default/comeback! We all have to abide by the rules, whether or not we think they are a hassle is irrelevent. They were developed from experience.

Regards

 

To be honest the garden power kits sold by the shops can be just as unsafe even if you follow the installation manual.
The blagdon power kit manual (for example) states you can replace the 5m tail to the house with a
longer cable "if required".. using 3x 1mm2 conductors.
A little further into the manual it states you can also extend the kit upto 40m.

The kit doesnt appear to say what the armoured conductor size is, but if i had to guess i`d say its probably a 1.5mm2.

So some poor soul buys the 20m power kit and an extra 20m extension in good faith and replaces the house tail with a 10m or more run of 1mm2 cable.. as they don`t say just how long it can be

Then he finds his installation gets a fail from the sparky testing it due to the excessive voltage drop!

The manual also fails to mention the capacity of the cable will be different depending whether its run in air (clipped to a wall) or buried in the ground.

Hopefully the unfortunate guy would get a full refund on the now "used" but useless power kit, which would help offset his cost for the 40m of higher capacity armoured cable he should have been sold by the shop in the first place. But the chances are they dont sell a kit like that

 

I understand what you are all saying and maybe I'm a bit of a rebel when it comes to safety, (never yet met a Health and safety person in the building trade that was "normal", but then I've not met them all, so there may well be a few out there).:D:D

As you guess, I'm not an electrician either, which I guess, most of those quoting the regs, probably are.


Its just that we do certain things for years, then suddenly some bright spark, (no pun intended):D, deciedes its all a bit dangerous, and we need new regs.

That part is fine.:thumb:

But suddenly everything that happened and went before is branded totally dangerous, because it was not done according to the NEW regs.

At this rate we could end up getting everything rewired about every five years, according to when and how they change the regs.

 

Sure spark,

A combination, of multi meter, volt stick, socket tester, and importantly common sense. If needs be google search of the regs eg bathroom and kitchen zones etc.

Fine for adding an extra socket, replacing or adding a light or wireing in a bathroom fan. And yes i do know about the need to check that adding the extra socket wont cause overloading.

Im sure your going to say I should have an insulation tester/ combined multimetre or whatever but I havent got £350 to spend on one.

BTW, anything more than the jobs above Id use an electrician for.

 

Firstly, apologies to water garden. Having read his/her post, I see that they have made very similar points to me. I did not read every post in this thread. Sorry.

I appreciate what you're saying about using as much equipment as a DIY'er can get hold of to make sure their electrical work is safe.

However, there are certain things you can't check with this kit. Leaving aside Insulation Resistance (this is a measure of whether your wiring has any short-circuits in it, water in junction boxes etc...), there are two other tests which our test equipment does that are not available on DIY kit.

Those are Earth Loop Impedance which is (as some may remember from their physics lessons) a measure of impedance or resistance of the earth fault path, carried out between phase (live) & the cpc (earth wire) from the point of test back to the origin of the supply, including supply transformer & service cables.

You need a very low resistance to make sure that fault current is not impeded ie the electricity can flow to earth as quickly as possible to ensure swift disconnection of the supply in the event of a fault. The trouble with DIY testers is that most indicate an earth connection is present even when that impedance is unacceptably high.

The second test is the RCD test. This checks that the RCD, a piece of equipment designed to give protection against electrocution, is working as it should. There are tests to make sure it does not trip when it shouldn't and tests to make sure that when it does trip, it does so within the required time. These tests and times vary depending upon the level of protection offered by the RCD and the standard to which it was designed.

Todays regulations, BS 7671:2008 or the 17th Edition, require RCD protection to every circuit within (and without) the property.

Under previous editions, in some properties, the type of supply meant it was imperative to have RCD's protecting the supply because the means of earthing had such a high EFLI reading that a fuse or circuit breaker used on its own was not sufficient to ensure disconnection of the supply in the event of a fault within the required time.

These are known as TT supplies and do not have a connection to earth provided by the supplier. Instead, they should have a connection to an earth electrode driven into or buried in the ground to provide a literal connection with earth.

I see many TT supplies without such a connection and without RCD protection. Sometimes, I find houses that just have an earth connection via the supply pipework (water/gas). An earth connection to a public water supply pipe has been prohibited in the regulations since 1966 & a connection to a gas pipe for such purposes has never been permitted. Often I find such cases where the supply pipes leading up to the property have been replaced with polypipe, leaving the property without any earth connection at all!

Please note, supply pipework is required in the regulations to be connected to the main earthing terminal for safety, however, you cannot make a connection to such pipework purely for the purposes of providing the electrical installation with an earth connection: it must be in addition to an earth connection, either one provided by the supply company or an earth electrode provided by the consumer.

So you can see that if you have a supply that has a poor earth loop impedance and it does not have RCD protection, you are in grave danger of electric shock or electrocution.

Inspection & testing, of which the above tests form a part, is just one aspect of electrical installation.

There is also circuit design, which encompasses loading, conductor thicknesses & circuit lengths, which includes volt drop. And the practicalities of which materials and products to choose for the job and how to install them correectly & safely.

I hope this goes some way to explaining why it is still possible, despite all good faith, intention & all the tools eqipment and products a DIY store offers, to unintentionally install a dangerous circuit.

If the mods here will permit this, I would like to post a web address to a DIY forum where sound electrical advice is available.

www.diynot.com/forums

 

During the repairs to my house following the floods I had an outside socket fitted..

all armoured and ID'd the switch in the garden room aswell..

So strict were the rules that they had to rewire the entire house...and the new system was so sensitive that we ended up renewing the cooker because a small fault meant the trip was constantly activated. I understand that less than 12 months since the work,updates to the regulations have rendered the work out of date:rolleyes:.
BTW...the Spark who did the work brought an Inspector to look at his work as part of his re-registration testing....The work was A1:thumb:

 

Yes, the latest regs came in full-time on 01/07/08.

These now require all circuits to be RCD-protected, whereas the previous edition just required RCD-protection to socket outlets likely to supply equipment for use outdoors.

 

I cant argue with your post, sure spark.