Today’s find in the attic – all the upstairs lights are like this.
I shouldn’t be surprised, the extension was the same and the previous owners lied through thier teeth over all sorts…
😯

Old colours, but that’s kinda beside the point – at least they are the same.
Is there a fundamental problem with just putting all that in an enclosure, or fitting junction boxes as required?

It’s all now in junction boxes.
Worrying that in effect it’s live wires/bare contacts hidden under insulation.

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It’s all now in junction boxes.
Worrying that in effect it’s live wires/bare contacts hidden under insulation

I took down a partition wall in my brothers old flat. In the place of junction boxes or connecting blocks wires had been joined by twisting them together and sticking them on dods of plaster in the backs of the boards.

That’s what we had in the extension – twisted and taped wires, main cable threaded through dot n dab behind plasterboard…

Worrying that in effect it’s live wires/bare contacts hidden under insulation.

isnt that kinda how all electrical stuff works though, pretty much? At least there was insulation!

Similar thing left by a “professional” sparkie when he fitted sockets in my loft:

Bear in mind this is in an eves storage cupboard where I’m likely to be crawling around in the dark or sliding big stuff in and out.

(Though slightly better than the other socket, where the earth wasn’t actually attached. 😯 )

After my amateur hands found it, it now has a proper junction box:

Worrying that in effect it’s live wires/bare contacts hidden under insulation.

Isn’t that “all electrical wiring” you’ve just described ?

Isn’t that “all electrical wiring” you’ve just described ?

You’re the second person in this thread to beat me to that reply. (-:

edit: oops – obvious joke is obvious. 😳

Whilst all the STW Sparkies are assembled:

When we were kids, there used to be a narrow alley between two terraced houses. If you stood in the alley and put your hands on each house you’d get quite the shock. What was going on there then?

Edit: Just went on google streetview for a trip down memory lane – and the house on the left is gone! Just a gap 😯

A bare live cable touching the wall, and when it was damp you’d feel the shock?

Happened once to me, was called to a house that was being plastered, plasterer said he got ‘tingles’ from one wall, it turned out the previous owner had removed wall lights, and left the live cable in the wall behind a tiny bit of filler, when the plasterer had wet the wall down, he was getting a belt each time he went over that bot of wall with his wet trowel.

What’re the fifth and sixth cables for? A lighting junction box normally has four terminals

And why is/was there a red and black going into the same terminal (second from left)?

With my amature spark knowledge,I think the black and red into the same connector relates to having 2 switches that control one light.

There’s a fair chance that I’m wrong

Ok, let me rephrase…

Bare contacts and wires hiding underneath thermal insulation…buried in dust.

It’s three light switches going to a pendant and two sets of spotlights, now with additional extractor fan…

At least it’s pretty neat. I wouldn’t be worried by it.

And why is/was there a red and black going into the same terminal (second from left)?

Normal for stairway lights where you need one switch at the top and one at the botom. Although usually you do it in the switch with a one going in and two (one red one black) going out.

Cut the green one

Grab the cat

About 25 years ago when I worked for BR, we were handing over a site to London Underground due to a boundary change. This site was an old track paralleling hut which basically takes in and feeds out the 750V DC to the conductor rails. It didn’t have any local mains 240V AC so the interior lights were fed from the 750 (3 x 240V lamps in series). Whilst at a handover meeting with LUL they were flabbergasted that the lights were fed this way and wanted to see the wiring used. I unscrewed a circular conduit junction cover to expose the original 240V cloth covered vulcanised rubber wiring (probably from the 1930’s when the site was put in) and a chocolate block covered in very tired insulating tape. All at 750V!

I’ve seen worse in my last house. Much worse.

But I wonder if DIYers have a tendency to sometimes over engineer stuff like this. Usually, after I’ve done something with wires I ask my friendly qualified electrician cousin to ‘check’. He mostly replies with. “Yup, that’ll be fine”. Which I think translates to “That’s a better job than I would do” 😆

OP , what you see in the pic may just be the tip of the iceberg.
Really needs putting in a suitable enclosure.
Maybe get it all checked out in respect to the 17th edition regs, and I’d do an earth loop impedance test on the circuits.
Rule of thumb says that if theres been no problems thus far then it’s probably ok, but to be 100% you can’t assume that.

Mate of mine bought a rather expensive 4 bed new detached house from a large well known national builder.

Not a single earth in the whole wiring.

Not a single earth in the whole wiring.

😯 ‘sake! I really hope he caught that inside the snagging period?

That would have been a very interesting call to the contractor responsible!

My old DIY book had a section on wiring faults. There was a set of pictures of wiring and the reader was asked to identify the faults.

I got all of them apart from the last one. There was a picture of the inside of a junction box as the lid had been removed. I spent ages looking at the wiring and I could not see anything wrong with it at all. After a while I gave up and looked at the answer.

Answer was “No lid on junction box”!

‘sake! I really hope he caught that inside the snagging period?

That would have been a very interesting call to the contractor responsible!

He did, first thing he did (he’s a tiffy, which is basically a spark with attitude) was plug in a circuit tester, then pulled off a couple of face plates. I reckon they were using ground workers and labourers to do all sorts, as lots of sites do.

Rule of thumb says that if theres been no problems thus far then it’s probably ok, but to be 100% you can’t assume that.

The power to our semi-converted* loft was fed directly from the incoming mains without a circuit breaker. Worked fine. Thankfully the first thing we did was get an electrician in to put about 13 new sockets, a new consumer unit and test everything. Pointed out quite a few things which were wrong ranging from the above to minor stuff like the spur to the conservatory being undersized (it’s a shared 16A with the garage and utility).

*there’s stairs, carpet, boarded and insulated roof etc and a velux window, but there isn’t really proper standing room and the staircase/door wouldn’t meet building/fire regs.

My old DIY book had a section on wiring faults. There was a set of pictures of wiring and the reader was asked to identify the faults.

I got all of them apart from the last one. There was a picture of the inside of a junction box as the lid had been removed. I spent ages looking at the wiring and I could not see anything wrong with it at all. After a while I gave up and looked at the answer.

Answer was “No lid on junction box”!

My old H&S manager got in an argument with the HSE. They walked past a barrier and said “what’s wrong with this area”, he pointed out that the most dangerous thing was probably now the inspector stood in a cordoned off area with no PPE and not signed in, didn’t go down well.

there’s stairs, carpet, boarded and insulated roof etc and a velux window, but there isn’t really proper standing room and the staircase/door wouldn’t meet building/fire regs.

Yeah we have one of them. Legally it’s a “storage room” as access is via a drop ladder, but it is floored, insulated, plastered, painted, two velux windows, lighting and sockets.

We also “store” a bed up there. Which comes in useful if we have to store any house guests. 😆

Those jobs by ‘professionals’ up there are the main reason I want to do stuff myself. Get charged £5k for a rewire and not be sure whether its been cowboyed or not, or do it yourself and be certain its safe…

Have a sparky coming round tomorrow to do a safety check, and will be testing him out to see if he spots some of the obvious stuff before I consider using him.

We also “store” a bed up there. Which comes in useful if we have to store any house guests.

I’m planning to ‘store’ a projector, screen, consoles, Hi-fi etc (and a guest bed/futon).