Electrician found "serious" (?) problem while doing other work

moonrakerz

penrhyn wrote: »

Any electrical equipment you have that's plugged into one of these sockets is unprotected by the fuse in the plug, this is a shock/fire hazard and needs investigating and fixed. A more horrific scenario would be if the consumer unit is itself reversed.
In a multi occupancy situation its even more important, as if the original electricians were colour blind/incompetant the fault may have been perpetrated through out the building.

In most cases the equipment will still be protected by the fuse.
However, what is very dangerous is that all the switches, most of which are single pole, could be open circuiting the neutral and not the live. This means that you can switch something off "at the wall", it will stop functioning, BUT, will still be live !

mrs_moneyspinner

we have a light in our bathroom with just the bulb in it - never got round in 14 years to getting a shade. about 5 yrs ago we replaced the basic light fitting for another the same, simply because it broke where the plastic became brittle. This light is on a circuit of hall/bathroom/bedroom. Yesterday a little brown metal bit dropped down it was a bit rusty looking (no doubt due to all the steam baths we have)- I presume it's a connector for the lightbulb - now no light working. Is this something I can easily fix for myself (female, handy with a screwdriver, know earth/neutral/live no knowledge of circuitry) or an expensive job for a qualified expert? Can anyone save me from a major spend please?

mrs_moneyspinner

oops - sorry this should probably be a new thread but as it's on the same theme hope you don't mind me sharing?

sarah_elton

Of course I don't mind.

If no one answers try starting a new thread - they might not realise there's a new question...

weekendwarrior

mrs_moneyspinner wrote: »

we have a light in our bathroom with just the bulb in it - never got round in 14 years to getting a shade. about 5 yrs ago we replaced the basic light fitting for another the same, simply because it broke where the plastic became brittle. This light is on a circuit of hall/bathroom/bedroom. Yesterday a little brown metal bit dropped down it was a bit rusty looking (no doubt due to all the steam baths we have)- I presume it's a connector for the lightbulb - now no light working. Is this something I can easily fix for myself (female, handy with a screwdriver, know earth/neutral/live no knowledge of circuitry) or an expensive job for a qualified expert? Can anyone save me from a major spend please?

This should be pretty easy.

I'd just replace the light if I was you. Try and get one that is suitable for use in a bathroom environment.

There are some great pages on changing light fittings here, this should make it relatively easy for you-

http://www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk/diy/electrics/light_fitting/index.htm

Cagey

Back to the original post. I would be willing to bet that the wrong polarity is at the fuseboard & will not involve following wiring throughout the house. It may even be a job for the electricity company as the polarity may be wrong as it comes into the house. A bit concerned about the statements made by your electricians as the first thing you should do when you find wrong polarity is check at the source.

baldelectrician

espresso wrote: »

No competent electrician would leave your property without rectifying this fault.

I disagree.
A lot of the time I have no legal option but to inform the client and let them make the decision whether (or not) to have work done.

• You can't work for free (take a day unpaid to fix the whole flat)
• You can't pressure (or bully) the customer into doing work.

You CAN let them know how dangerous the situation is (I do this by expllaining and / or filling a triplicate book and asking the client to sign to say they have been informed of a potentially dangerous situation)

dean_ham

Sarah,

If the electrician is telling you ALL your sockets in your house are reversed polarity i would question (and the first thing i would have checked) is that the main socket circuitry at the distribution board is connected correctly in the first place....
I.e the live wire for sockets is connected to the neutral bar and the netrual wire is connected to the live MCB/Trip.

If he has checked inside your distribution board and its wired correctly then it should be a simple enough job to sort out. Undo 2 screws holding the socket onto wall. Undo LIVE/NEUTRAL screws, swap cables and connect back up.

Shouldnt take him any longer than 2-3 mins each socket.....

sarah_elton

It's not ALL the sockets.

Firstly, the kitchen ones are fine - they said they're on a different ring to the rest of the flat.

Secondly, there's a double socket in the lounge which is fine. This is a different style of socket (the switches are more recent styling) to the others - it's either been added since the flat was built, or it's where a single has been made into a double.

They tested all the sockets (approx 8 IIRC) that are original ones in the flat, excluding kitchen, and they were reversed.

Guy's coming Saturday morning to fix it. Any tips for what I should ask etc?

As I said before, he's the other half of the sister of one of my mates. My friend has known the guy years and I really trust that (a) he knows what he's doing (he's qualified and a team supervisor at a big contractor) and (b) that he won't stiff me or do unnecessary work.

sarah_elton

Quick update - electricians came back yesterday and I'm now safe. Although there was an awful lot of "What the hell is that?" and "What have they done here?". They found another exposed live cable behind a blank plate. :eek: And also, after wondering why there were so few cables into my fuse box, they found a load of junction boxes in the loft which all the cabling went to, then a couple of big fat cables had just been run down to the fuse box. :eek:

Apparently someone had had a pretty terrible go at doing a DIY re-wire. :mad: I'd never have guessed - everything's always worked. And I've managed to go two years without finding those live cables myself (if I hadn't I possibly wouldn't be typing this!). The guys wanted to take pictures to show their mates at work because they said they wouldn't believe them about what had been done. :rolleyes: