Northern Powergrid beware of them

muckybutt

I'm shocked so to speak by their work.

Today NPG were doing work on overhead lines outside our house, this meant them having to disconnect the neutral and earth at our cut out inside the house.
This "electrician" firstly forgot the cover for the cut out he had taken off earlier leaving it in a neighbours property. Then he pops the fuse back in - seals it up and says yup all done bye.
I then went to turn the power back on - nothing happened ? me being a trained sparky got my test equipment out - no neutral ? looked at the cut out only to see the neutral completly disconnected :eek: and now live :eek::eek:
So quickly turned mains back off and went chasing after this chap. He came back and said oh yeah no wonder it wouldnt work....what a tit.

He reconnected it sealed it back up again and went on his merry way.

Again me being me and a sparky I wasnt at all reassured by his competance, so I cut the seal and went into the cut out, good job I did as he had also left the main earth disconnected !!!!!! ???

So I have now reconnected the earth and tightened the neutral back up again as it was still loose.

Rang NPG up and made a formal complaint, they are going to investigate the matter further.

DevCoder

£10 says they have a go at you for cutting the seal. You must have supersonic seal fairies of course

A lost/loose neutral, as you know, is probably the worst thing that can happen and is a major fire risk. Hope they throw the book at him tbh.

That was unforgivable, to then not connect an earth on a (I assume) PME service (either that or TN-C-S, but still the same) is beyond belief.

muckybutt

The fabled seal...yes.

The second I said they were like you're not allowed to do that ! my reply was along the lines of whats more important my safety or your seal ? her reply was well technically its tampering with the meter equipment.

We'll see what the area manager has to say today when he rings up.

muckybutt

Never got the fabled follow up call surprise surprise, so lodged a formal on line complaint.

Their response on the website says they will follow up within 10 days, Ba**s to that ! I gave them till today 4 days to respond or else I would escallate the complaint.

Being as their connection was so dangerous and could have easily killed someone I had escallated it anyhow to the Health and Safety executive.

Anyhow their area manager rung me today and apologised profusely, then came "Ive only just been told of your complaint and that you were going to escallate the matter if you were'nt contacted by today"...."you havent done that have you ?"...." yes to the H&S exec", he's meeting me tomorrow at my home.

HSE have also been in touch and have said they will be investigating the matter as a serious breach of H&S.

Apparently the chap that did the reconnection - or not as the case was ! - is a Supervisor :eek:

ROY47

muckybutt wrote: »

I'm shocked so to speak by their work.

Today NPG were doing work on overhead lines outside our house, this meant them having to disconnect the neutral and earth at our cut out inside the house.

I am a overhead linesman been doing it 35 yrs and for the life of me I can't understand why they would want to disconnect the neutral and earth at your cut out inside the house.

unless they were trying to locate a fault on an underground section connected to the o/h line ,but even then we would disconnect everything at the pole


We normally disconnect the live on the pole first then neutral then earth and reconnect earth , neutral then live

think you had a monkey doing that job :eek: :eek:

if you don't get satisfaction ring ofgem

muckybutt

According to the area manager they disconnect the earth and neutral from the consumers side at the cut out to make positive that polarity is right before reconnection.

I can see where they are coming from but I would have thought only the earth and main fuse need be removed ?

ROY47

They have their way and we have ours

If that's the way they do it , they are asking for trouble in my opinion

How would they do it if you weren't at home that day ??

earth and neutral are combined very often as you probably know

MY own personal view is what a rediculous way to do it :cool: