Might get a pro in to look everything over!

Where’s the fun in that 😉

My house has been chronically bodged for almost 100 years, renovating the upstairs has been a voyage of discovery where plumbing/heating/electrics are concerned. It now has all new radiators/sockets/lighting, oh and a ring main, rather than spurs 😯

We have found a few, my sister and her then boyfriend bought a place in London, when the sellers had moved out MrPP noticed that the roof/ceiling did not look “quite” right. When they had someone to look at it and the previous owner had taken out some roof struts so they could store more junk in the attic. The roof had to be completely redone – luckily it was a hot sunny summer!
My grandads place had a wire hanging out of the wall he was told it was not live. However the handyman found out that it was live. Luckily he was just a bit bruised and shocked. They also found nails through cables in the loft.
When we had our electrics done last year they found that the cables were connected with the things they call chocolate boxes.
Not dangerous but when we got our kitchen re plastered they found an arch in the wall that was not quite symmetrical – more leaning tower of Pisa looking!
BTW getting a pro to look it over if a problem does arise then they say “could not get into loft as full” to cover them. If you buy a place that has not got an electrical certificate assume it needs to be done.

When we bought our (part renovated) house, the old owner told us he had tested the chimney and everything was fine.

Just to be on the safe side (as we were fitting a woodburner) we had a smoke test done and it was leaking all over.

The old owner was a fireman. 😯

If we hadn’t checked it ourselves he might have been coming to drag our charred remains from the shell of the house.

When we bought our current place it needed gutting – thankfully

Floorboards up in most rooms and ceiling down on a few meant we found no end of electrical bodges – how the place had never burned down we’ll never know…

Fully rewired and plumbed now… no bodges, least none were aware of….!

damo2576 – picture from Brazil (or somewhere S. America) ?

I remember those shower heads from Brazil when I was there a couple of years ago, although I never saw one quite as bodged as that!

OP I’ve seen 3 phase cables joined like that in the exhibition halls in Bangkok.

LOL at damo’s pic…I took a shower under something like that in a Peruvian hotel, I felt reasonably relaxed until sparks came out of it. I checked out shortly after.

Electric underfloor heating control box fitted on side panel of bath.
Cooker wired to 13A extension cable on plug socket ring in kitchen.
Twin and Earth feed to garage buried 4″ underground down side of drive.
Switch to sockets in garage wired in upsidedown ie.- On = Off .
Never had a shock off anything though.

In the process of buying my first house. Might get a pro in to look everything over!

Current house was only a year old when we bought it, one socket in the lounge is connected to the Immersion circuit and the other is a ring-main all by itself. The garage sockets were spurred off the smallest bedrooms’ socket, and its light came off the bedroom light too. And don’t even ask about the cooker…

Oh, another one. The house had a single patio door, the type that pops back and then slides behind the fixed pane.

The glass wasn’t safety marked.

Then our builder noticed that the door’s lower edge was lower than the floor inside, so someone had laid laminate floor up to a point, then concreted a small slope down to the lower edge of the door. They’d also removed a course of bricks to fit it in, which took the door down through the DPC. We think they’d bought a cheap door which didn’t fit the existing ‘ole, so made ‘adjustments’ accordingly.

Not exactly dangerous, but bloody shoddy and 2 families have lived here with a very bad trip hazard for the main route out of the back of the house.

SWMBO has just reminded me of the kitchen, and the roof, and the boiler problems too…

Don’t fit 240V spots in lathe and plaster ceilings or your house may burn down… this was why our circuit kept tripping. All lights now replaced with low voltage (low heat) variety. And yes the insulation has smouldered away to bare wire 😐

MrsPoddy – Member
When we had our electrics done last year they found that the cables were connected with the things they call chocolate boxes.

Think you mean “Chocolate Block” type connectors (ie plastic terminal strips which may be cut to the appropriate length)
Like these

Oh and Rich_s, Jan remembers your gas fitter previous owner 😮

Did the wife remind you to fit that cowl I modded for you

I bought a 1960’s house here, nice solid house but **** me the person that had been bodging was clearly tired of living. Thankfully step 1 of moving in was to drop all the cielings and remove all the GIB.
During that I found:
Double plugs in bedroom spurred off another plug in the next door room, to save time they simply ran normal mains cable out the wall under the weatherboard and back in the wall in the bedroom.
Completely burned out wiring on all the downlighters in the bathroom. No RCD just a main fuse replaced with a nice bit of #8 wire.
3 completely live metal switch boxes thanks to the pro sparky obviously picking the wires he liked and simply bending the rest back
A complete 3 phase circuit connected to nothing other than dangling wires in the loft, all live. Thank **** it was in the far corner.
Was quite a special place. We ripped it all out and started again. Scary though, my apprentice builder welded himself to a light box – was weird as the main power box was off. Then we found the second supply coming in the basement under the shed (!). Had a meter and everything but nobody was paying for it. Utterly odd.

A recently renovated flat, the cooker hob abnnd oven wired to 13 amp plugs .

Customer had removed the banister and spindles from the stairs, me carrying a door down slipped sideways off stairs after she put a dust sheet on them before moving the kids toy cars.

Hot wate connected to toilet cistern, flushing hot water.

Cold water main connected to gas pipe, when the gas was switched on water flowing from cooker hob, and flooded the gas main, huge disruption, while the water was sucked out.

Dodgy bathroom floor, lifted the chipboard and numerous wires going everywhere all combi blocked together,

7kw shower connected to 13 amp mains plug,with screw for a fuse, strong smell of melting plastic when shower being used,only once thankfully.

large upvc window, 5 foot high and 3 foot wide, in a hotel ,just foamed into opening of brickwork, as it was a fire escape window opening the window inwards caused the window to almost fall on us.

Naturally the bare earth had been used as the live mains wire. Lovely

yep, had that as well. Except it was done by pros as well rather than by home owners. Sometimes home owners actually get it right

Said ‘pros’ also managed to wire between two theoretically isolated circuits as well so when you hit the isolation switch the circuit was still live due to being connected to the other circuit :(. I ALWAYS check if something is live now even if it is switched off.

I was also fortunate in checking that the gas had been switched off just before another set of folks cut through some ‘old’ pipework with a disk cutter. Said pipe was still connected to gas 😯