Started rewiring my house now that christmas is over

All my sockets in the house were on one ring and many were actually just spurs , some were spurs off spurs off spurs – scary. My and 3 double sockets were spurred on a double socket using single 13 amp pluged in to the primary double socket. only found this when i hauled the oven out of its housing to rewire it in

– now got upstairs /downstairs ring and a kitchen one.

My shower was 6mm from the box to the switch then 2.5mm from switch to shower ( thatll explain why it trips randomly – or not so randomly now)

Hopefully work nicer with the right wiring in place.

Garage was on a 2.5mm cable with no breaker in the garage.- i have thicker extension leads offering better protection

Will be on a 10 mm with a breaker in the garage once done.

Old rubber cabling on all the light circuits – seems the fella did a partial dodgy rewire and cba doing lights , probably decided not to after finding he would have alot of chasing to do since the conduits cant fit the wiring required to bring the lights to modern spec.

Ill be glad once its done , now i have seen what ive seen i wish id made it more a priority. I know things can be right but not be right but afaik its never been right to run 26 sockets in a single ring and have legs of 5 sockets on a spur

Had i known half this i doubt id have slept easy at night in the house. The previous owner told me he was a plumber to trade ( although in his 70s ) but judging by the boiler install i removed i dont think he was ever a plumber, it wasnt even badly fitted it was dangerous.

Where to start?

Here’s two to be going on with:

1) large unsupported doorway knocked through a supporting wall. I had wondered why the floor upstairs seemed to slope a little.

2) mid height purlins in attic just cut out because they were in the way of a velux window. Miraculously as the roof is a hipped 30s one it hasn’t actually done any damage.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg though.

Best street / worst house. Lucky I have a sense of humour and no inclination to move for a decade.

30 amp live wire sticking out the kitchen wall.
The previous inhabitants had taken out the original cooker and just cut the wire off. Then filled the hole with expanding foam and painted over it.
Wasn’t entirely happy about that one.
Been a couple of others but nothing as bad as that.

yeah all my sockets are on one circuit as is all the lighting. need a bigger CU to change this so until we can afford a sparky, it’s gonna stay that way, though we have replaced all the wylex wired fused with the MCB types.

Moved in and the bedroom was baby pink with a crappy MDF wardrobe built into one wall… On pinging this with a finger it collapses and on the top was a small box, about A3 size, 35mm thick. Opened it up and inside was a brand new immaculate corset…

Transpires that the reason for the previous couple selling was she had taken to drinking from the furry cup and he pursued an evening occupation as a transvestite in the bars of Leith…. hope the two kids are ok…

Here’s one for you: How about a first floor joist hanger put in upside down?

Spotlights in the floor around the master bed
+
turned on to see how they look
+
curtains that were long enough to touch floor and reach spotlights
=
nearly set fire to the house within an hour of getting the keys

Had i known half this i doubt id have slept easy at night in the house. The previous owner told me he was a plumber to trade ( although in his 70s ) but judging by the boiler install i removed i dont think he was ever a plumber, it wasnt even badly fitted it was dangerous.

Its amazing how a tradesman will do really, really shit work on his own house.

My mate bought a new 4 bed detached house a couple of years ago. Decided to stick a circuit tester in one of the sockets, no light up, tries another, same result, so he popped off the socket faces, and there was no earth. The whole house had not a single earth lead in it.

Stewart Milne homes not for the win.

My brother’s place was a death-trap.

Had been ‘renovated’ by the previous owner. Re-wiring consisted of, for example; filling in the sunken wall socket boxes, changing for skirting board mounted ones and running the cabling over the floor – obviously an underlay and carpet was thought to be sufficient protection and saved the hassle of having to chase new cables in. The new down-lighters in the kitchen were flouro strip lights on the bottom of the cabinets with wiring run on top of the wall but behind the cabinets themselves.

Personally the shoddiest worksmanship I’ve seen was from a ‘tradesman’ – Moben kitchen fitter. I won’t list the complete balls-up they made of our new kitchen but it started with an electrical fire…

The central heating boiler flue pipe went through the plasterboard and I assumed up a liner in the chimney. Nope, it just went though the plasterboard and stopped. Then some of the gases went up the unlined chimney, the rest came back into the house.

Edit: it wasn’t DIY though, the previous owner gave me the bill for the professional job and there were yearly service/inspection stickers on the boiler for every year from the install.

Ah nobeer the builder who famously imposed a maximum capacity of people for a kitchen in his flats after the floor dropped mid party 🙂

Stripping off plaster board in my brothers place, wires on the ring main had been joined by twisting bare ends together then sinking them into a dod of wet plaster on the back of the board.

When I was a student a friend of mine had a light in his kitchen that couldn’t be switched off – there wasn’t a switch.

Not my house but here’s a few from when I was a builders labourer. All on same house.

Took a bathtub out to find 3 double electric sockets behind (all live)

Toilet wasn’t fitted correctly, dripped poo, wee and whatever else into playroom below.

Sorry no DIY but plenty of “industry” ones….

This is why I do everything myself, most ‘professionals’ just seem to be Cowboys with a Van, although I’ve met a few decent tradespeople recently. My 2nd brickie, Alan Raven, was the hardest working person I’ve ever met, and did a really excellent job.

When I was a student a friend of mine had a light in his kitchen that couldn’t be switched off – there wasn’t a switch.

There is something strangely pleasing about that.

My brother just payed for survay to be done on the house he bought, but then payed extra for an in depth one,they checked all this stuff, and so far hasn’t had any surprises.

Hear no evil see no evil

Plug in testers showed no faults. – if he thinks his surveyor did much more hes dreamng might have caught the no earths fault above though

I could have continued blissfully unawares. – tbh id budgeted for a rewire and a new heating system on viewing the house as i could see with my eyes the faceplates were old as hills and the boiler also way so no surprises for me either.

In the last house we rented the kitchen lights stayed on even when the electricity was turned off at the consumer unit. Luckily we discovered this when something tripped and the kitchen lights remained on rather than when we were changing the light fitting

B & Q fitted a kitchen in my house a year before I bought it ( have the receipt from the previous owner) 10 yrs later, I strip it out. Found something really wrong with the ring main and eventually sussed, that they had split the ring main in a socket, hid the wires outside the socket back box, used choccy blocks untaped and then ran a cable ‘ thrown over’ the cabinets and into the wall to feed the washing machine !! Found that the cables run into the wall, they had smacked out the plasterboard and then made a jigsaw of off cuts of tiles to fill the hole and then splodged tiles over the top. All ripped out and redone making the ring main back up.
Previous owner left a lightbulb hanging out the bathroom wall with all wires showing , paint burning off the wall and that was it.
Mother in laws ex husband( the wifes dad) put a socket in upside down just behind the sink at the height of the splashback.Also he used to put sockets in wherever he wanted and there are some sitting on skirting boards and others littered at all differening heights. Mother in Law wanted some new bedroom furniture, so we ripped out the old stuff. Found he had run the pipes under the wardrobes and left them just lying on the carpets nowhere near the walls and snaked across the room to the radiator.

Wot Nobeer said. Never buy a house from someone ‘in the trade’.

First house I bought was previously owned by a builder – when he put up a stud wall he simply built it over the carpet and when I put some shelves on said wall they touched at both ends with a 1″ gap in the middle.

Prior to this I rented an upstairs flat from a plumber. You couldn’t fully close the living room door or the second bedroom door as they collided with the pipes he’d dropped down from the loft for the radiators.

Sorry mr C im going to defend trademen here , my reletives and friends are trademen and they are no a chunts , i do know a couple who are tough. Some have morels im afraid but are few and far between

Those two are gold though 🙂

My house is a polished turd that is slowly being sorted. Owned by an electrician before us and the wiring is awful. Typical scenario is an underpowered transformer to a set of down lights. A bit of timber hiding a hole in the felt underlay. Removing it exposed expanding foam!!

Our last house was only a couple of years old when we bought it.

Changing a single socket to a double. So plugged in a light and switched off fuses to find the right one. Eventually on switching off the shower one it went out.

Garage light was spurred off the 3rd bedroom light, garage sockets were spurred off the 3rd bedroom socket. Apparently don’t need a separate consumer unit for an attached garage 🙄 Many other things too.

And plumbing. Couldn’t understand why I struggled to install an extra sluice for the dishwasher – at the local supplier I walked in with the pipe. Ah says the guy, you live on <insert development>. How’d you know, says I?

‘cos they installed some non-standard stuff there…

Hearth made of wall plaster.

I looked round a place once that had Lino fitted straight on top of carpet in the kitchen.

I have to plug in two extension cables, ‘coming out’ (not a socket or any kind of spur, just cables appearing out of the wall) of different walls in the spare room to get the light on in the loft, no idea what they were playing at, might look at it @ some point… This was part of the previous owners extension work, they also walled up a built in cupboard by nailing plaster boards to the doors & paper over it. Intrigued & looking for more wardrobe space in the main bedroom (cupboards are back to back), I had a friend remove the middle partition, to find 70’s clothing still hung up inside! (they removed the nailed up doors & put in some supports)

On the electric box under the stairs where it said off they actually meant on.

Every room in the house as had some DIY disaster in it but the kitchen was the worst

Half the cupboard doors had no cupboard behind them.
The electric cooker 6mm cable was connected to 2.5mm cable in a metal backbox with no grommets. The metal box had cut through the insulation on one wire and nearly the other. The 2.5mm wires were pushed into a plug socket with the plug pushed in afterwards.
The gas pipe that wasn’t required for the electric cooker was just bent over with a jubilee clip around it.
Various parts of the ring circuit were made from electric iron type flex cable.
The stop cock had been moved and resulted in what can only be described as not of pipe work that came in and out the floorboards numerous times for no reason. It was such a mess that I dare not touch it. The plumber who was fitting the boiler tried to make sense of it and couldn’t so we took the floor boards up only to realise that it was nothing more than a pointless knot of pipe work that served no purpose.

We had lived with this lot hidden for 6 months. Every room was then treated as if it hid the same nightmares and most them ad their fare share of dangerous bodgers

My last house was built and owned by the builder , who then built another house up the lane and moved to there. One bedroom floor was so badly levelled, we had to put self closing hinges on the new door I put in or it wouldnt open. If I shaved the door like the previous panel doors I was replacing, to clear the floor, you had a 3 inch gap under it !
Also he only put a one way light for the stairs, so you had to climb the stairs in darkness to then switch the light on, which was then pointless as you had reached your destination. He also ran the lighting in with rubber black flex, which when I bought the house was perishing and really needed a complete and proper rewire.
That was a tradesman, abeit a dodgy one.

Bare live wire covered up with plaster 😯

Some funny stories above!

The worst I encountered was in my last house:

Several of the kitchen units appeared to have draws in them, but try as I might, I couldn’t get these bloody draws to open.

I had a draw for cutlery, but I wanted another for tea towels! So I got a long screw driver and leavered them open and found there wasnt even a draw in there!

Ended up getting myself a second hand chester draws off freecycle so I was happy enough.

our current house as previously owned by a builder.

He’d made quite a few modifications. The bits he did are generally goo. Nice yorkstone patio and fireplace etc.

The problems are the bit his mates obviously helped with. Floor board nailed down through central heating pipes. It didn’t leak (until we lifted the floor).

And the wiring has taken years to finally sort out.

The word is DRAWER, not DRAW, but DRAWER – got that? Good. 😉

No under bridges they fit draws – false ones apparently – not for storing tea towels

Ugh, we bought our house off a carpenter. He laid a beautiful solid oak floor directly onto the ground floor joists. It’s not beautiful anymore.

Solid wall house, built 1910. Double glazing fitted in 1990’s, before I owned the property. Renovating the house, one room at a time has revealed various miss-haps. Worst/ best to date has been in bathroom where I found various voids packed with sodden glass wool insulation due to poorly installed windows and sanitary ware.

Electrics have been good though, touch wood.

Found some 4-core telephone cable in the attic of our flat – not connected to the phone line, so tested it and it was live. Traced the cable, and ironically it was powering the smoke detectors 😉

Had a door frame into the garage that wasn’t screwed to any framing but was held in place with about 15lbs of expanding foam.
Drain vent disappearing into the ceiling but not out through the roof.
Breakfast bar held onto the wall mainly by paint (there were four screws but the heads were almost the exact same o.d as the i.d of the brackets.
Dining room light wired to be always on.
Gas heater exhaust and bathroom extractor both fed into the attic space…
Really dodgy wiring all round…

It’s our first house, and has been a hell of a learning experience!

Prob best that you touch wood, not bare metal!
Moved into my first flat I bought… Everything needed done- 2 fuseboxes were cast iron, wiring still had canvas insulation round it, took the coal bunker out the kitchen, replastering and found most of the pipes for gas lighting were still in place, led water pipes everywhere, original sash windows with rippled glass (I liked those- sorted as best as we could).. Had a single kitchen unit with a sink in it and an antique gas cooker- that was the kitchen!
The list goes on.
Took me a year of living and sleeping in one room cos the floors were up and the ceilings were down whilst I did most of the repairs myself..

Previous house…

When you turned on the kitchen extractor fan the outside security light in the garden would trigger..

This house.. Previous owner tried to fit an oven but not quite enough space.. So it is about half an inch above the counter top and has about 10degrees of tilt which means oil etc always collects in one corner of a pan.