Posts Tagged: electrics

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9
Jul 09

New CU & Meter

We’ve just had the electric board (or whatever they’re called these days) out to change our meter for a shiny new one. The request was actually to move the meter to a new location – a turn through 90 degrees and onto the wall above the back door. This will mean that we’re able to remove the old wall it was on. We’ve also had a new, much larger, consumer unit installed. This is not in use yet. It wasn’t easy to find a CU with enough slots for all the rings we are going to need – 18 in all. It seems that most stop at 12 or 14-way which isn’t enough for our future requirements. This unit came from TLC and seems to be a well made metal unit.

The first pic shows the new bits. In the second you can see the old location of the meter as well as the spaghetti which will need to be removed when the time comes.

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30
May 09

Spaghetti Junction

Being an old house the electrics are not particularly pretty. In fact they’re a complete mess and with need to be totally replaced at some stage.

The first step is to remove some of the consumer units that are dotted around the place!! I think there are 4 at the moment, ideally these will be consolidated into one. In the pics below you can see some of the mess. You’ll also notice some faded squares of wall where a meter has just been removed. This was the meter for night storage heaters which we’re no longer using.

This last picture shows the mounting position of the new meter and consumer unit. The position of this is above the current backdoor. Eventually this will be blocked up and a cupboard created to house the meter and also coats etc:

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2
Apr 09

Shed electrics

If you read the earlier post on Summer House electrics then you’ll already have the jist of this. Before this level could be finished and covered in gravel electrics need to be run in. I’ll let the pics explain:

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18
Jan 09

Summer House electrics

So here’s the back level of the garden finally levelled out:

Next job is to cover this with membrane and then a lot of gravel (not looking forward to borrowing all that up the hill!!). Eventually there will be a Summer House/Workshop type building on this space. However before I can cover the ground I need to run the electrics in. So that involves some work in this corner:

In order to comply with current building regs garden electrics need to be buried quite deep in the ground. Hence this trench:

Having lined the bottom of the trench with pea shingle to help drainage it’s then time to run the conduit and armoured cables in the trench:

More pea shingle secures and protects the electrics:

Extra protection is provided by old paving slabs on top of the shingle:

Finally some warning tape goes on top of the slabs to warn any future diggers:

I now need to fill in the final trench with some earth and some more warning tape just below the surface. It’s a lot of work these days running garden cables!!

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26
May 08

Storage Heaters gone

After the large (£800!) electric bill we received the storage heaters around the house had to go.

Disconnecting the electrics was the easy part. All the heaters were connected into an ‘off peak’ fusebox. With luck there was nothing else in this fuse box so once this was split from the main consumer unit the whole box could go.

Removing the actual heaters was much more of a problem. Having not removed any before I wasn’t aware of the weight of these things. I though, ‘just unscrew it from the wall and carry it away, job done’. The first part of this worked, however carrying it away was never going to happen. I didn’t realise these things are full of fire brick each one weighing a tonne. So, removed the cover from each heater and then removed the bricks one by one before carrying the case out seperately.

And one gone:

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3
Apr 08

Pipes and Wires

A welcome break from the digging and back indoors again – good chance to escape the Cornish summer (!!).

Having removed the wet room the old kitchen and conservatory could be next. One thing stood in our way though – all the old services, electrics plumbing & things like that. I think the term ‘Heath Robinson’ was invented for this house. It’s probably quite dangerous the way some of it has been wired, thank goodness we don’t have gas!

So, power off, water off and out with the cutting gear to remove all the services from this back area.

A coupla pics so you can see the kind of spaghetti we are dealing with!