Plumberists messing with electrics

Just a rant. Why are plumbers able to do beautiful pipework with exquisite bends, swoops, soldered joints, and so on, but when it comes to electrical stuff just do it on a paint-by-numbers approach and stuff it all in a junction box?

The manufacturers publish wiring diagrams but I have yet to move into a house where anything is done in a standard layout, or in fact in a way that doesn’t make me cringe. I’d be mortified if I did this standard of work myself in *any* job.

^^ the FrostStat in this installation originally only operated if the heating was on and the temperature in the airing cupboard fell below freezing. Fixed now.

What the hell is going on with all the earth wires?

Also, its a thermostat, not a bloody heating circuit, surely alarm wire would have been cheaper and easier to work with?

That looks very much like the rat’s nest stuffed behind my controller, I can’t make head or tail of it in relation to the manufacturer’s diagram.

What the hell is going on with all the earth wires?

I wouldn’t be taking the wiring colour as necessarily reflecting the function, whoever wired mine had a relaxed view of such things.

especially as there’s clearly a black wire, attached to the socket box earth…….

Why are plumbers able to do beautiful pipework with exquisite bends, swoops, soldered joints, and so on

You obviously have much better experiences with plumbers than I do

I had a look in our control box when I was installing the hive system. Turned out a yellow and green “earth” wire was actually doing work experience as a live wire… you can probably guess how I found that one out!

Why are plumbers able to do beautiful pipework with exquisite bends, swoops, soldered joints, and so on, but when it comes to electrical stuff

Probably the same reason electricians wouldn’t generally do beautiful plumbing?

especially as there’s clearly a black wire, attached to the socket box earth…….

Was on mobile, didn’t spot that.

**** hell…

Yea……

I recently had the joy of moving my thermostat and timer.

Thankfully the boiler was installed with a terminal box with a wiring diagram in the lid so that end at least was easy.

But there were wires that went up into the ground/1st floor floorboards, then when I cut through what I assumed was the other end of the wire at the thermostat it turned out there was a junction box inbetween so just because I was holding the only T+e wire going into the void, doesn’t mean it was the same as the one coming out……

The plastic junction box was nicely earthed though even if the equipment the other side of it wasn’t wired up to it 😂

**** hell…

presumably it’s one of the sleeved ones coming in?

My entire house is wired like that 🙁

I have a circuit tester and rely on it heavily.

My entire house is wired like that 🙁

Same here.

three rooms across the back in the ‘new’ extension were twisted and taped as connections for the lights and ring main. All hidden in the gap of an old window lintel in the wall…

Sadly not just plumbers I’ve been behind sparkies who have left a mess like the original photo. And yes I’m a plumber.

As a mechanical engineer i have always thought house wiring to be a bit crap. Not just the approach but the technology… not moved on like plumbing.

I always always check wires and never assume.  I’ve got 3 phase delta in my house (a little unusual really) and the electrician had wired a light between two of the phases such that if you flipped the circuit breaker the light went out but it was still live because you needed to flip another circuit breaker to kill the other side of the circuit.  always test

I really hate that we are limited in what we are allowed to do in a house because, ‘professionals’, but they are often even more shonky.  I guess I would rather have a poor professional than someone who had no idea just guessing.

Mine was originally like the OP. During lockdown one the time switch went phut. New time switch and I installed the Drayton terminal box, labelled the cables and wired it all up tidily. The only dodgy wiring was the twin and earth to the thermostat downstairs.
The electrician from Boxt thought I was a fellow pro when he re-wired everything last October which was gratifying.

I wired my own house under building control inspections, cost £130.

I’m head of engineering for a COMAH tier site – I hate general ‘house bashing’ change a bulb or fuse type electricians with a passion but like and always get on with control systems ‘electricians’.

House bashers and Control Electricians are very different beasts….

I think the whole driver for the Electrical Regs was the standard of work historically…

I wired my own house under building control inspections, cost £130.

I did all the wiring for our new kitchen, an electrician came round before I started to go through what I was doing and did the final cooker connections. He said “you’ve done a really good job there. That’ll be £200 for 20 minutes work and a certificate fankuverymuch.”😖

House bashing sparks, usually boil in the bag with no proper apprenticeship. There’s the odd good one but loads that have done a 2 week course after they saw a leaflet in b and q and anyone can do it it’s so easy. Soon get found out if they go near a good commercial company but luckily most don’t

Boil in a bag… like that

Diluties was a term years ago as in a “diluted” skill set

The bloke who had our house before us was an electrician at a nearby factory. Which accounts for a lot of industrial cables and trunking left behind in the garage.
That garage which being about 25 metres from the house had an underground cable coming from the house feeding a single socket and single light switch, with no consumer unit.
At the house end, a cable came up out of the ground about 2 metres from the french windows with a 3 pin plug on the end. So to get power to the garage you had to throw an extension lead out of the window and plug it in.
But when I had a look at upgrading the electrics I spotted that the cable at the house end was brown, blue, green/yellow. The cable at the garage end was red, black, green. So somewhere, buried under the lawn there was presumably a connector wrapped up with insulation tape.
When I got an electrician friend to test the rest of the house electrics he confirmed there was a massive voltage drop across the cable. I suppose the benefit of that would have been that snow would never settle on the grass, or maybe cats pissing in the garden would never try it twice.

(the black wire attached to the lug in the backbox is actually black and green, not black).

The plot thickens. I think someone’s miswired an ICBM launcher, do you have a cellar with a big locked steel door?

the black wire attached to the lug in the backbox is actually black and green, not black

It’s connected to the screenwasher motor in your LandRover. These sorts of colours are common in electronics, they’ll be to DIN, BS or some such standard. There’ll be a main colour and a narrow “tracer”

That would explain why the headlights come on when I try to run a bath.