Bright spark techie knew the drill and used it to install a power line, but couldn't outsmart an odd electrician

Welcome once again, dear reader, to the comforting embrace of Who, Me? in which Reg readers share their tales of times technology plans did not quite work out as hoped or – as in this case – the solution turned into the problem. The hero – or perhaps protagonist is a better word – of this tale is a technician we'll Regomize as …

[lglethal]

Even in the 90's Stud finders with the ability to sense cables existed and were not particularly expensive. Sounds like someone should have added the purchase of one of those into the "upgrade" cost.

Still, this is a good lesson for everyone that Electricians are absolutely the worst for a) following wiring rules, b) using common sense when installing wiring, and/or c) enjoy playing pranks with the wiring on house owners (and all subsequent house owners!). We've found wiring in our house (from 3 owners previous to us) that stretches diagonally across walls instead of only horizontally or vertically, uses random coloured wiring (not related to what the wire is actually carrying), and other parts that feel like the cables were laid down during the brief period when MC Escher thought a career as an electrician sounded like fun.

Anytime you think "Nahh, the Electrician could never be that stupid!", check, check, and triple check to make sure, because you can be absolutely certain, the one time you dont check, they will have been...

[A Non e-mouse]

uses random coloured wiring (not related to what the wire is actually carrying)

Our estates people asked me once what a Cat 5 cable was for as it was in the way and they wanted me to move it. I said it wasn't anything to do with IT, so they went and chopped it. The next day the alarm company came asking who chopped their cables. The alarm company had just used some left over Cat 5 cable rather than their usual cable to wire up the sensors.

[Paul Hovnanian]

"The next day the alarm company came asking who chopped their cables."

By which time the burglars had already cleaned the place out.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

The actual mistake was not labeling the cable. (ab-)using RJ45 cable for other things is common.

[DS999]

Was going to say the same thing

But did those exist in the 90s, which this must have been with Netware in use? They do a fine job of showing you where the US 110v 15A lines so they could have easily found that line for him, if modern electronic studfinders (that detect the physical stud itself rather than detecting nails and also detect electrical lines) existed at a reasonable price back then.

I remember "stud finders" back in the day used to be a plastic box with a plastic rod that spun with magnets on its ends. The rod would move when you moved it over a stud, though in my experience they were pretty terrible at doing so unless you were lucky enough to pass directly over a nail. They were so useless my dad relied on rapping his knuckles on the drywall and listening carefully as the knocking makes a more hollow sound in the cavities between studs (this would not apply to exterior walls due to the insulation, of course, so wouldn't have helped our friend since there was a window there and that method probably wouldn't work so well with plaster rather than drywall)

And I agree 100% about electricians. I've done enough DIY electrical work to realize that you should never trust that electricians followed the code that existed when the work was done, let alone what more modern code you may be familiar with. Nor should you assume that the work had been done by an electrician at all, in homes certainly you have DIY work (which I've contributed to myself in addition to the efforts of a previous owner) that may be done "differently" than expected. In an office setting you would hope that's not the case, but I wouldn't be shocked (ahem) especially back in the 90s when computers were more seen as a necessary evil than something you build you business on that a company might have a project to "turn this storage room into a machine room for our servers" and the guy in charge hires his cousin "who has worked construction so he knows how to demo/build walls and run wire".

[J. Cook]

Re: Was going to say the same thing

:: attempts to crash through the wall, Kool-Aid Man Style, but nearly gets garroted by the 16/3 romex line run at neck-height in the wall ::

Been there, done that. In this house, I've run across (and fixed!):

* A home office room that had a pair of 48 inch, quad tube commercial fluorescent fixtures from the 70's with one having a cable that was dropped through a hold in the ceiling (no junction box!) and the other with the lines just tapes together with no twisting or wire nuts (that was still not code compliant in the 70's!) AND had a three switch gang that totaled up for 4 code violations in a single go (all switches shall be contained IN the box, wires shall be run IN the box, switches shall be screwed TO the box, and power must originate FROM the box, not the light fixture!)

* No less than three different flavors of romex types in a single room (copper, full aluminum, and copper-clad aluminum)

* Leaving live wires disconnected and hanging in a ceiling space with no junction box whatsoever with no wire caps

* A 240 volt, two phase pool filter pump motor on a pair of single 120 volt phases (physics let's it work, but it's a gods thrice damned fire hazard. AND NOT CODE AT ANY POINT IN HISTORY.)

The work I've done on this place has been done by licensed elec-chickens, or myself, and I'm a pirate electrician- I KEEP TO THE CODE. (the National Electric Code, that is...) :D

I'm skilled enough to swap outlets and switches and do some other minor work, but I call in a professional for work in the circuit breaker panel or for bigger jobs- that's what they have insurance for.

(the pool line was disconnected, trimmed back to where it exited the house, capped at both ends, and re-done entirely to be compliant with current code, which involved running a sub-panel to the new pump when I had the pool re-built two years ago.)

[PRR]

Re: Was going to say the same thing

> power must originate FROM the box, not the light fixture!

Never saw that in NEC. It is quite normal to run power to a lamp fixture, then go on to a switch. There is even a note about doing this in pre-made cable: neither conductor is the 'neutral' so you mark the white with black (since the 1980s).

> two phase pool filter pump motor on a pair of single 120 volt phases

In days of fuses, that's the only way you could do it. I worked a school building that was all fuses on KNIFE SWITCHES. The white wires become redundant but that's not unsafe. --- ah, that was all 3-phase, except the kitchen range, which was a 230V split fed from 2/3 of a 208V 3-phase feed. Converting from fuses to breakers took over 80 years, but was a simple 1-for-1 change.

Yeah, box-less twist splices in hidden spaces, bathroom fluorescent started better if you touched it (no ground), lampcord run through floor "temporarily" (both my uncle and me). My parents house, the clothes dryer had been tapped -ahead- of the main fuse.

> electrical wiring in commercial construction (in the US in recent electrical code at least) is protected by metallic conduit.

Iron conduit goes WAY back, to the first electrical fires in NYC and Chicago. Places where your mistakes will have huge consequences: commercial/industrial but also side-by-side residential. Conduit starts from Gas Pipe (why the fittings are threaded) though thinwall has taken over all but the most violent situations.

> the 7200W hob was connected to the wall socket using a poundland kind of plug, instead of being directly connected to a junction box.

?? In the US it is normal to use a very large plug on 30A, 40A, and 50A appliances, particularly if they need to be moved for cleaning. No, not a "poundland" item, the plug is $20 or more.

> too important to use the kettle in the kitchen and brought their own kettle into the office ...with the inevitable fuse blowing results.

That same school building was wired for candles. Maybe one power outlet per room, and maybe 20 rooms on a hallway fuse. When electric kettles got common, the profs liked a spot of tea between classes (so, all the same time). They could use two in one hallway, the third would simmer for a few seconds and then the fuse failed. This was "solved" with resettable circuit breakers. In locked cabinets, but the locks soon "broke". When young they would hold three kettles for just long enough but a fourth forced a walkaround to reduce the load and then a reset. After a while that was not needed: these were the notorious (low price) Federal Pacific breakers which stopped breaking if tripped too often. I've seen that panel too hot to hold, the smell of old cloth insulation charring...

> use their reciprocating saw to cut through its own power cord.

That's not even exciting. I had a friend, every time I went over I brought the black tape and patched-up his tool cords.

========

My "Ooops!" story is: needed to bring network coax(!) into the conference room, through a foot of soft masonry. Picked a spot outside the very wide door trim. I checked both sides of the wall noting a telephone cable tacked to the molding. Nevertheless I drilled the cable dead-center (I'm so talented?). 50-pair cable. Not only knocked-out most of the phones in the building, it soon turned out that splicing the damage did not fix them all. (This phone system so old that there were fuses in a locked closet.)

[DS999]

Re: Was going to say the same thing

> power must originate FROM the box, not the light fixture!

Never saw that in NEC. It is quite normal to run power to a lamp fixture, then go on to a switch.

I think this is a matter of terminology. He was probably referring to the fact that only neutral is directly connected to the light fixture, and the switchbox connects 'hot' to the fixture when "on" so it is what decides whether it gets power or not - if you have properly wired a simple one way light turned off, you can touch the wires at the fixture without being shocked.

[bemusedHorseman]

Re: Was going to say the same thing

Every light in my house is switched on neutral, because electrical code for manufactured homes was way more lax 40 years ago. Turn the switch off, take out the bulb, and you can still get a jolt if you stick your finger in the socket because the switch controls the "return path" only.

[H in The Hague]

Other folks' DIY

"that stretches diagonally across walls"

Many years ago I lived in a house with ugly porous tiles in the kitchen, dining area and loo.

So I rented a Kango hammer and started removing them in the kitchen and suddenly heard an odd hiss above the noise of the hammer - some !?@#! had laid the gas pipe diagonally across the kitchen floor, embedded in the mortar used to set the floor tiles! Fortunately I got to the main gas valve before anything happened.

When I removed the tiles in the dining area I discovered they'd put a sheet of plastic on the wooden floorboards, then mortar, then the tiles. As result of which the floorboards and the joists carrying them had largely disintegrated due to dry rot :( Oh, and that floor carried the spiral stairs going to the upper floor, so had to get help from a mate, go to the workshop, cut a bit of 6" pipe, weld plates top and bottom and fit that under the spiral stairs before I could go to bet (rather late). At least when I removed the ugly tiles in the loo and hall I discovered a nice, undamaged granito floor under them.

The joys of undoing other folks' DIY! -->

[Julian 8]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Not gas, but water. I was converting a room from a small bathroom into a cupboard and was removing all the old pipe work and going to cap it off. I got my circular saw and adjusted so it was just about able to cut through the floor boards and nothing more. Cut along and then heard pssssssss and got wet. Ran and shut off the water that was now going everywhere. After I got the boards out, I looked at the pipe. It was notched into a joist OK, but they had not put a metal blanking plate over the top (as regulations said they should). so my saw blade had just nicked the copper pipe with the smallest of nicks, producing a really fine spray. A bugger to fix as it was so close to a joist that using a yorkshire joint was fun (no room for compression). I left that floorboard open for a day with an extinguisher next to it

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Other folks' DIY

A friend of mine had a similar experience. Wanting to stop a floor board from moving and squeaking before laying carpet (in a new build house) he gently tapped a nail into the board at the line of the joist. Then he heard a faint hissing. He'd hit a central heating pipe, installed in a notch right under the boards.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Yes, it's quite normal to find pipes (and cables) sat in notches in joists and touching the underside of the board. In our house (1940s ex-council house) we have concrete joists (timber was in short supply at times during the 40s) with a batten fixed top and bottom to take nails for floor and ceilings.

When I started on the "lift boards and see what horrors I find" stage of some works, I found that a) some ****tard has cut the battens in a wavy line, b) cut away long sections leaving boards effectively unsupported, resulting in c) board actually supported by the pipes in places. Only been here a few years and I know there are more horrors to uncover - but already there must be a few people with a burning sensation in their ears.

"In theory", if the ****tards cared, it would be quite simple, almost trivial, to run pipes where they should be (in the centre of the joists, not notched into the top). But do they do that, do they ****. Cables have no excuse - they are flexible enough to fit without needing a straight line of holes and access to feed pipes in from the end.

Icon expresses my feelings at some of the stuff I find.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Other folks' DIY

run pipes where they should be (in the centre of the joists, not notched into the top)

For future reference - if you should be doing any work requiring new joists - open web joists are your friend. Downside is less ability to adjust them on site if your measurements aren't quite right, but apart from that they solve a heck of a lot of problems.

I always found it frustrating, when electrician-ing, that the regulations (in the UK) had very strict rules about where and how to run cables (regarding joists this stipulated where across the length of the joist it was acceptable to drill, what size hole was allowed and absolutely forbade notching) but plumbers seemingly got away with murder.

M.

[Martin-73]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Oh yes, this, 100%

[a_builder]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Oh plumbers do what they want…..I’ve got to do it for my job mate…..cut through 3/4 of a joist….no other way…..translation that is all I can be bothered to do.

Not once but twice I’ve been standing on staircases thinking they are a bit springy…..first time 4” joists cut to fit a 2” waste pipe…..second time 3” hardwood joists cut to fit central heating pipes in a historic house.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Other folks' DIY

This is where an IR camera comes handy. The floor in the living room has "warm spots", so i suspected heating pipe. The IR camera confirmed and found a lot more. Now I know exactly how they are laid out.

[H in The Hague]

Re: Other folks' DIY

"This is where an IR camera comes handy."

Yes! And now reasonably affordable. Detects not only pipes but also cables if they carry a reasonable current. I use a FLIR "imaging thermometer" which is almost the same, but cheaper, and shows v small differences in temperature.

[Snapper]

Re: Other folks' DIY

I did that once and had to call out a plumber on a Sunday!

After he'd gone I continued very carefully tapping in nails but working to the side of the pipe I could see under the floorboards and marked with masking tape on top.

Hit an old, punched in nail in the joist that must have been there decades. My nail bends at 90º and goes straight into the same pipe.

Plumber could not stop laughing.

Previous owner had built a 1st floor extension over a sloping roof the length of the house and either he or his sparky had held the lighting wires in place under the ceiling joists with bent nails, then put the horizontal plasterboard straight underneath, nailed to the joists and crimping the wires tightly that were then connected straight into the light fittings with no extra cable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Old Victorian terrace and our first house. Took the carpet up in the bathroom and was going to sand the floorboards - only obstructions was a little nail sticking 2mm up. Ah-a, said I, picked up my hammer and knocked it flat. Then heard the pssssss...

The hot water pipe had been laid 1-2mm below the bottom side of the floorboards.

And someone in the past had concreted over the floorboards in the entrance hallway, so one day it felt a bit spongy and then started to collapse into the cellar. At the time SWMBO was 8+ months pregnant and we had no easy way in or out until it was fixed...

The only sure thing about old houses is the century of botched DIY before you got there to make your own bodges.

[Martin-73]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Had same in our own loft, set my circ saw to the depth of the boards less 0.5mm to avoid ANY risk. Cut my access panel, and the lights went out. Some b****rd had gouged out the underside of the boards for the cables going over the joists..... embarassing for a sparky but it was our own house lol

[Potty Professor]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Not IT, but very dangerous. We moved into a house that had a gas supply to a shelf above the kitchen door, where presumably the gas meter used to be. The current gas meter was in a cupboard under the stairs, with all of the gas plumbing correctly connected. I decided to remove the dead pipe from the kitchen, but when I loosened the blanking cap, gas issued out, so I hastily retightened it. I phoned the gas supplier and asked them to come and disconnect the pipe from the main, only to be told that their records indicated that it had already been disconnected, and any pressure inside was probably caused by corrosion inside the pipe.

I loosened the cap again to let the pressure out (after opening the kitchen door to allow the gas to escape), and waited for the hissing to stop. It didn't. I rang the gas company again, who were adamant that I was mistaken. I then said "So you wouldn't have any objection to my connecting my central heating boiler to that pipe, then?" There was a gas fitter round to my house within half an hour to cut off this unmetered supply. Should have kept my mouth shut :-(

[NXM]

Unmetered supplies

A mate of mine used to fix people's electrical problems, paid for by monthly insurance. He was called to a house on its own in the middle of nowhere, occupied by an elderly couple who'd reported a nasty fizzing noise behind the cooker.

Sure enough, the cooker cable was faulty, but it was chased into the wall instead of being fed by an isolator. He asked where the isolator was to be met by a blank stare.

Where's the consumer unit then, he enquired: another blank stare. Supply fuse maybe? Meter? No.

Turns out the house had been directly connected to the pole transformer some distance away in the 1940's. No fuse, no meter, and they'd never had a bill. My mate had to walk away and let the electricity board deal with it.

[Martin-73]

Re: Unmetered supplies

Oh ouchy! I found some fed from the PILC under the floor.... someone must have had testicli of ferrous metal to tap into that live!

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Other folks' DIY

We moved into a house with wobbly floorboards but before I could do anything we had to move back out for a couple of weeks for a complete rewire after the fusebox blew out. Turns out that the previous 'electrician' had run the mains cables through notches in the joists but to ensure they lay flat used bent over nails to hold them down and one of the wobbly floorboards was where the nail sat proud in a notch that was too shallow. The foot traffic over that area cause the wiring to break down and short out. When this was all replaced (and circuit breaker fitted instead of fuse wires) they showed me the stretch of damaged cable. About a foot just had beads of copper instead of wires...we were very very lucky

[Martin-73]

Re: Other folks' DIY

Plumbers still do this, they have no 'safe zones' like we sparks do....

[phuzz]

Re: Other folks' DIY

I'm just in the process of buying my first house, so thanks to all the commenters here who are starting to put me off the whole idea...

[Martin-73]

I should downvote you, being a sparky, but you're accurate, have hit many a cable installed outside of zones etc.

[aerogems]

Sort of like the color coding system they came up with for the manager in the US version of The Office. Green means something like "Go ahead and shut up about that," and Orange is, "Orange you glad you didn't bring that up?"

[David 164]

I have hired three electricians in my life all three smelled of booze. I think that may explain a thing or two.

[Martin-73]

There's a reason for that, every customer knows how to do our job ;) till they don't

[jmch]

Re: "Nahh, the Electrician could never be that stupid!"

A flat I bought (built in the 60s, so quite possibly had this setup for 30+ years) had the live and neutral mains wires swapped over at the point where the mains ran into the main fuse box. So all the 'neutral' wires in the whole flat were actually live all the time!

Random coloured wiring is par for the course!!

[Hairy Airey]

Qualified Electrician

Absolutely agree. Every house I have owned has had some stupid wiring in. Extension under carpet, live round one side of the room, neutral round the other side and of course earth diagonally across.

Socket wired the wrong way clockwise: earth - neutral, live - earth, neutral - live. It worked but not in a good way. (All metal in house becomes live when on)

Lighting cable inside a plug socket. Only discovered when socket started smoking.

And yes, I put these right as best I can.

[Yes Me]

Re: Qualified Electrician

Moved into a house (in Switzerland, many years ago) which had a nice built-in wooden unit for stereo and TV. Installed stereo, looked for power socket. Unswitched live socket at the bottom of the unit, too far to reach. Fortunately, extension cord already plugged in, left by previous owner. How kind, I thought. Extension cord had a (Swiss) 3-pin plug at each end. Lived to tell the tale.

[darkrookie28]

1. We follow the rules. We have a book of them.

2. That was prolly the GC fault for touching things they shouldn't.

3. That is mostly for the plumbers.

[I Am Spartacus]

We have one of those as well. The sockets in the downstairs lounge are not on the downstairs ring main. They are on the upstairs ring.

And yes, I did find out the hard way.

[Rob Daglish]

Sounds like the guy that wired my in-laws. But just to check, did he run out of cable half way up the diagonal and use a connector strip wrapped in insulating tape to make the join?

(It's still better than the outside lights that he fitted, where he'd run out of brain and decided to use a BT socket to join two pieces of twin and earth. We only discovered this when a BT chap came round to trace a line fault and plugged his tone generator in, an activity which didn't end well!

[A Non e-mouse]

Never assume anything about how an electrician will have installed cables. Doubly so for buried cables.

My parents were redecorating a room in their house and wanted to move some electrical sockets. They started to chip away at the plaster to discover that the cable to the existing sockets didn't run up/down or left/right, but diaganolly. But it wasn't a simple diaganol: It had kinks in it.

They ended up replastering the entire wall once they've chased out the existing cable runs (and replacemed them with sensible runs!)

[abend0c4]

My parents some decades ago moved into a house to which some additional sockets and lights had been retrofitted. I was somewhat taken aback when I leaned against a wall and it lit up from the sparking behind the plasterboard.

The UK rule of wiring only vertically or horizontally doesn't seem to apply here in Portugal where it's more common to see walls chased out diagonally, presumably because it saves on cable. I always thought it a bit ironic that the ring main was supposed to save on scarce postwar cable while the routing rules caused more to be used.

However, I was kind of hoping that the new power supply would originate in a different building and we'd get to find out what happened when the RS-232 cable created a ground loop for all the manufacturing machinery.

[A Non e-mouse]

Same parents in the same house:

They couldn't work out why they kept on getting static electricity shocks when touching the mirror in the hall (This being the 70s & 80s nylon was very much in vogue so static shocks weren't unusual). They later discovered they hadn't been getting static electric shocks but mains electric shocks: The previous owners had put the nail in the wall the mirror was using straight through the live cable burried in the wall.

[Potty Professor]

Zzzap!!

Soon after we were married, we bought a cottage in a village near where we both worked. My wife complained that she was getting a tingle from the cold tap in the bathroom sink, so I checked it for potential, and found that it was securely earthed. She said to put some water in the sink, and then touch the tap, sure enough, a small tingly feeling was experienced. I checked the plughole surround, and found that it was at about 50V from the earthed tap. I traced the source to the overhead cable running across the yard to the shed, the flat twin and earth had deteriorated in the sun where it was bent at a 90° angle to go from the vertical run up the outside of the brickwork to the underside of the horizontal catenary across the yard. When it rained, the current flowed out from the live wire into the damp brick, across to the lead waste pipe, through the wall, and up to the brass plughole. I cut out the lead pipe and replaced it with a plastic one, which solved the immediate problem, but later on I had to run a new SWA cable across to the shed to stop the leakage into the brickwork. I avoided the sharp bend by introducing a "Pigtail" curve at the minimum radius of the cable.

[collinsl]

Re: Zzzap!!

The house I grew up in had an earth rod by the back door and I remember getting a minor shock off of the bath taps because the cable got knocked off the earth rod one day!

[MyffyW]

Yes, my dramatic story arc had already predicted fun and games with differential earths. Remembering fondly (sort of) the "earth" we had at one plant which registered about 100V. Well it kept you on your toes ....

[I could be a dog really]

The RFC (Ring Final Circuit) to give it it's proper name did in fact save on cable compared to radial circuits at the time.

Back when* the norm was one or two sockets per room (at most), you would run your "ring" around the middle of the house taking the shortest route that visited each room. You'd have one socket in each room fed directly from the ring. Where you wanted a second socket, at the outer side of the house, you'd run a spur off the first socket in the room. Compared with an equivalent number of sockets, all on radial circuits, that was a significant saving in cable.

However, the real saving comes from having fused plugs - that's what makes the RFC practical. By having fused plugs, you could use fixed cabling and fusing that supported a "full load" (13A) at at least two sockets, while employing diversity to allow many more sockets. When it was introduced, the cable would be the old imperial size of 7/0.29 (said as "seven stroke oh two nine") which was roughly comparable to 2.5mm2 in metric cable. With a current carrying capacity of somewhere between "teens"A and 27A depending on whether fed by fuse or MCB (miniature circuit breaker), and how/where it's installed, as a radial it would not be allowed for it to be protected by a 30A fuse or 32A MCB. It's the division of current between the two routes (each way around the ring from the supply point) that makes it feasible - though there are issues if you have a lot of load close to the supply in one leg.

So the use of fused plugs allows the circuit to be fused at far greater than 13A (or the pre-BS1363 common size of 15A) and thus have "many" sockets on one circuit; and it's the ring arrangement that allows a smaller size cable to be used. Between them you save both on the length and copper content of cable needed.

These days, when there are less plug-in electric heaters used**, and a requirement for many more sockets feeding lower power equipment, there is a move back towards radial circuits. If you are a masochist, you can use 4mm2 cable and a 32A MCB. But more normally, you'd use a 20A MCB (or 25A if you can get them to fit the consumer unit) and 2.5mm2 cable. Particularly with the latter, you can do a new (re)wire with radials without significant penalty - as you point out, with the number of sockets needed these days, RFCs aren't the cable saving they once were. "Multiple" 20A or 25A radials also gives you better segregation if a circuit goes faulty - particularly now that RCBOs (residual current device with overcurrent protection - effectively and RCD (residual current device) and MCB in one device) are common and cheap, allowing a separate RCD per circuit.

* Don't forget that BS1363 which introduced us to our now ubiquitous square pin plugs with fuses was introduced in 1947.

** Given the standard arrangement of a single 15A socket in a couple of rooms, you could not plug in two powerful heaters into one socket without blowing the fuse. Having a 15A radial with more than one socket would be equally impractical. As an aside, at church we were without heating for a while due to a failed boiler, so we had to use fan heaters to take the chill off and keep our coats on. When a fuse blew, someone expressed surprise as he'd "used two different sockets" - without realising that they were on the same radial circuit and protected by a 15A rewirable fuse. I'd already worked out which sockets were on which circuit, and plugged one heater into each circuit - he'd moved one.

Going off on a tangent, BS1363 does not specify the dimensions for a socket. It specifies in detail the dimensions for the plugs (max/min pin size, pin spacing, even the shape of the ends of the pin. The requirements for the sockets are merely that they must accept any plug that is within the tolerances of the specification - e.g. maximum pin size without over-stretching any spring contact, and minimum pin size while still maintaining contact pressure. Do not ever plug in any of the so called "safety covers" as not one of them on the market complies with the dimensional standards of BS1363 and so can damage a socket - causing a fire later when there is nothing to connect the previous use of the safety cover with the failure. They also create a whole litany of other hazards that don't exist when they are not used. For more see the Fatally Flawed site.

[Martin-73]

Yep we remove them on EICRs (condition reports)

[Martin an gof]

Back when* the norm was one or two sockets per room (at most)...

More recently than you might imagine. The house I grew up in was built in 1967. The ring fed one single socket in each of the four bedrooms upstairs, and three of those four sockets had a spur running to a single socket downstairs; that is three single sockets for the whole downstairs - apart from the kitchen, which had two single sockets (fridge and washer) and a cooker point with socket (but a gas kettle) - of a large family house. Oh yes, there were also two radial circuits (or maybe it was one) supplying one fused outlet in the dining area and one in the hall, goodness knows what for.

The first owner of the house, which was built without central heating, decided to fit radiators downstairs in about 1970. One of the radiators was placed directly over one of the three sockets, but that was mitigated (slightly) because he also ran a cable from that socket out to the garage.

In other words, for a large chunk of the 1970s and 1980s I lived in a house with just two accessible mains sockets downstairs. You can guess how many three-way-plugs we had, later extension leads etc.

By way of a contrast, current house was built to regulations in force in 2019 and the Onsite Guide has some very interesting recommendations for numbers of sockets. Our smallish living room has a total of eight double sockets, for example.

As for socket safety covers, many years ago we were marked down when we had #1 sprog because we refused to fit socket covers. That was merely the beginning of our not-terribly-good relationship with the health visitor.

And finally - socket dimensions. I thought there was something in the BS about these? I keep getting annoyed at extension leads where there isn't enough plastic "above" the earth socket to prevent someone putting a plug in upside-down. Standard wall sockets have plenty.

M.

[Martin-73]

Yes for sockets it's required i believe, but it didn't always work that way, the older MK surface mount 'minilogic' sockets could be opened with an upside down plug. They later fixed this with the unique to MK 'equal pressure on L&N' to open the shutter

Extension leads are somehow exempt

[I could be a dog really]

Yes, there probably is something about minimum physical size of the faceplate - to avoid the "upside down plug" issue. But for the actual connections, only that it accepts any conforming plug.

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Ouch!

Lucky the drill was sufficiently insulating to prevent a truly shocking experience. This is precisely why I like these little cable detection gimmicks, even if the plans of the building are available and show where the wires should be. I have encountered enough short-cuts and assorted wiring horrors (including a yellow/green wire carrying 220 V AC) that I don't trust anything. Measure twice, drill once, one might say.

[DS999]

Re: Ouch!

There's a reason why electrical wiring in commercial construction (in the US in recent electrical code at least) is protected by metallic conduit. Sure you CAN drill through that if you're using an appropriate drill bit, but if you encounter metal while drilling into a wall and decide to keep going whatever happens after that is your own damn fault!

[Bebu]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

"including a yellow/green wire carrying 220 V AC" (240V hereabouts)

Not too keen on the the non-contact mains A/C detectors - seen too many false negatives. I've kept my very old inherited neon indicator screwdriver. What's the NRA's unofficial motto? - I suppose if I tried testing 110KV might be more apt than I would like (certainly missing a thumb :) Double check with a cat iv meter - (on ac volts range :)

Two switches for one light appears to be the logical limit of average sparky (at least of yore.) They appear to have found more possible arrangements than logic alone would allow :(. One nasty one seen in old houses, (really nasty with ES) has the bulb off but both connections to the bulb are active - half the time.

I am not entirely sure colour (red-green) blind electricians are purely apochryphal as I have lived in two separate regions each with its own notorious representative of this urban legend. And have experienced the work of one.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Many years ago when appliances had red (L) black (N) and green (E) wires, and you were expected to fit your own plug, my father came back from next door and wryly explained how he had saved the neighbours from a shocking experience with their new refrigerator (their paterfamilias being indeed RG colourblind; but at least his wife realised it might be a problem).

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

A friend's dad was red/green colour blind, he built power stations for a living!

I also know someone who got a job in BBC engineering despite being colour blind. He got hold of a set of the sight testing cards, had a friend tell him what numbers he should be able to see, and memorized the patterns as they appeared to him. That took determination.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

I had a colleague working in an ISP NOC environment some 20 years ago. When he left the company after his last shift, he confided to me that he couldn't tell the difference between green ("ok"), blue ("something's a bit wonky here") and yellow ("This could become an actual problem"). He'd been working night shifts on his own for a couple of years at that time. Luckily, he could still tell if something went orange and red so he wasn't ALL blind...

[lglethal]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

This is why traffic lights are good. It doesnt matter if you're colour blind, top means stop, bottom means go, and middle means, well, that depends on the driver...

[collinsl]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Except for the American ones they lay sideways

[DS999]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

In that case red is always left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Plus, certainly in the UK, the colours used are quite specific and the green is quite a blueish green. That makes it very distinct from the other two lights even for the common red-green colourblindness (deuteranopia)

[Martin-73]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Yes, 100%, the green is very blueish, i've been tricked multiple times by seeing them in the mirror and having to do a doubletake in case it was an emergency vehicle

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Although part of the work involved making comparisons of textile fibres there was no testing when I joined the forensic lab. One of our older colleagues was, in fact red/green colour blind so that was one aspect of the work he couldn't tackle. When we were recruiting several new staff a few years later we decided we'd better borrow a set of cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

People with colour deficiencies tend to compensate by noticing other details better. There are lots of stories about military camouflage not working on colourblind people as they see the shapes much more than the colours. So as long as the limitations are understood, it shouldn't prevent you from hiring someone (and actually might be beneficial).

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

Matching fibres involves matching colours in transmitted light and in various fluorescence conditions. Yes other factors such as cross-section shape, indeed texture and, where relevant, polarising properties are elements of fibre matching but I doubt anyone claiming fibre expertise would survive telling the court that they had a colour deficiency.

[Roopee]

Re: Ouch! don't trust anything.

One of the first parts of the electrical inspection/testing exam I took (C&G 2391 if memory serves) was to choose an appropriate set of testing tools from a collection that included some very inappropriate items; neon screwdrivers such as you inherited were definitely the latter - completely verboten! Something to do with how dangerously they can fail if I recall.

I too have one, but only because it's a handy little screwdriver with a useful pocket clip - I prefer to trust my approved Megger and Fluke equipment when my life is on the line...

[simonlb]

Not Unusual

It is not unusual, in the UK at least, where there is a light switch next to a doorway, for the electrician to run their cables behind the architrave on the door frame then up to the ceiling from the top of the door. The reasoning is that is saves time by not having to chase out the plaster all the way to the ceiling. Not sure if that has been banned in the current UK regulations now though.

What 'Antoine' should have done is at least take the front of the plug socket off to see which way the cables were coming from, or better still, pay to have a qualified electrician do the job.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not Unusual

" for the electrician to run their cables behind the architrave on the door frame then up to the ceiling from the top of the door. The reasoning is that is saves time by not having to chase out the plaster all the way to the ceiling. Not sure if that has been banned in the current UK regulations now though."

Most likely breaches the spirit of the regulations in respect of Electrical Safety Zones, but for a lazy electrician they could probably "interpret" the architrave as being within the ESZ for a light switch that's adjacent to the architrave. I've had a qualified electrician insist that because a cable is within a partition wall it qualifies as "protected" because one side of the wall is tiled and there's a couple of appliances in front of it. How that protects the back of that wall is presumably some magic of the regulations.

As with other posters, never, ever assume, always use a cable detector.

[Martin-73]

Re: Not Unusual

Nope that definitely wouldn't count as protected. It must be covered in some way, unless >50mm deep. Simple capping /safe plates will NOT do, it must be earthed metallic coating (conduit, MICC, FP200 etc) unless installed within safe zones

[SonofRojBlake]

Re: Not Unusual

I wish I'd known that 20 years ago before I tried impressing my girlfriend by fitting a lock to her bedroom door (don't ask) by drilling into the frame... all the lights went out, and it was then I saw the wire literally GLUED to the doorframe. I get the reasoning now, but it just didn't occur to me. Now I assume there's a wire everywhere I drill.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Not Unusual

It's the best assumption both for safety and just annoyances sake. Also when drilling or cutting into something, use a depth limiter to prevent accidental drills or cuts too far.

[Roopee]

Re: Not Unusual

I do too, now, but back in my early days of DIYing (before I qualified as an electrician) I drilled through a twin & earth buried in plaster where it shouldn't have been... not only did the bang throw me off the stepladder but it also unwelded the tungsten carbide tip from the masonry drill bit I was using!

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Not Unusual

Not sure if that has been banned in the current UK regulations now though

It has, and for "a long time". The "rules" (BS1767, a.k.a "The Wiring Regs") have required cables to run in "safe zones" for a long time. For a light switch, that would typically be vertically up from the switch and within the width of the accessory. Doglegging and hiding it behind the door frame would not comply. Mind you, in one of our properties, I was adding network/TV points, and as I followed the line of the power cables (I was chasing out the original single TV coax, and adding a larger conduit), I realised that they drifted across by a full eight inches between the sockets and the ceiling. Must have been on a real bender when they did that - or perhaps, the sparky did it right, but then a following trade moved stuff before it got plastered over.

[Roopee]

Re: Not Unusual

Err, that would be BS 7671, right numbers, wrong order :)

[spireite]

Re: Not Unusual

Tom Jones has probably drilled a few holes to be fair.

[Anonymous Coward]

We had a great one.

We had an electrician who was doing something in the main machine room and needed to drill a hole in a partition wall through to the comms room. Only he managed to drill perfectly between two power cables running up the wall on the other side, shorting both and causing a bit of a bang and a mess. We were out for a day recovering from that.

Fun times!

[Chloe Cresswell]

We had a fibre pulled into a building in the City of London. Contractors we being very cautious with it, down to radaring the wall.

We asked why, and were told the last job they did, the main tech (no longer with them) drilled into a wall and though a 44KV feed, taking out 4 buildings in the time it took the drill bit to vapourise, and they weren't making that mistake again.

[Anonymous Custard]

the main tech (no longer with them)

Quit, fired or vapourised?

[Chloe Cresswell]

Tech: fired, drill bit: vaporised and lining the hole with a metallic coating. I think the drill might have quit working in protest, so... all three? ;)

[Julian 8]

Never trust anything

We moved nearly 2 years ago, and we were not anticipating have a re-wire of the house, but when the electricians came to do a "simple 2 bathrooms and kitchen of downlighters", it soon became apparant that the old owners bodged it badly.

When I got to the outbuilding, that is a mess wiring wise - what I thought was a main is a spur, how they have run the lights is odd, but from seeing how a light socket was partly embedded into a wall, I guess at one stage it was a single room and then split.

I started to call the old owner "mr mastic" as if there was a job (so reattaching blown plaster to the walls), then mastic was used

[MiguelC]

Re: Never trust anything

When I bought my house, more than 15 years ago, I swapped the gas cooker for electric appliances, so the builder's pseudo-electrician prepared the wall sockets (or so I though) and plugged my new electric oven and induction hob. I had then a certified gas technician come to check on the gas pipes and close the one that fed the original gas cooker. Fortunately, he was also a certified electric inspector because, when looking at the hob's installation, he shuddered in disbelief. Apparently, the 7200W hob was connected to the wall socket using a poundland kind of plug, instead of being directly connected to a junction box. He told me the plug would have probably burnt and might have caused a major incident. So I asked him to properly redo the wiring and never had a problem since. Close call...

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Never trust anything

It was the "kitchen fitter who (almost) knows which wire goes where in a socket" issue that created our rather restrictive new UK building regs in 2005. Thankfully it was recognised that these went too far, and in 2013 the restrictions were largely reversed. But there's still enough (along with changes in BS1676, a.k.a. The Wiring Regs) to reign in the worse of the kitchen fitters who should even be thinking of changing a light bulb.

[Roopee]

Re: Never trust anything

Something tells me you might have a slight problem with numbers... (see my previous comment re BS 7671). It amused me that you got the right numbers again, but in a different wrong order! :)

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Never trust anything

In my defence, I claim too many early starts and late nights :-(

You are of course completely correct.

[Gene Cash]

"set about installing one"

Yup, this is where I would've said "I'm out"

Not being a licenced elechicken, I would have gotten a serious beating at work for doing that.

If the place later burned down for any reason, it would have been my fault.

[Sceptic Tank]

Re: "set about installing one"

One could be charged with wrongful conduct.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: "set about installing one"

Yep, there's a difference between work that I'm happy to undertake at home compared to in the office.

Not that I'm going to compromise safety at home in any way (likely the opposite compared to many electricians) just that I'm not covered for such commercial works and the regulations are different.

What it does mean is that I have a better understanding of what needs to be done, the annoying gotchas that are typically inflicted, and also to identify when shoddy work has been done. Such as:

• Plugs fitted with exposed inner wires - apparently fitted by an electrician and signed off
• Finding 240v electrics in metal under-desk cable trays with exposed copper. I had a complete fit about this one
• Cat5e cabling which was apparently tested fully by a professional except I found all manner of non-working wires (could have fallen out over time, but unlikely if fitted properly) and a gem recently where two wires were pushed into the same connector (not something that would ever pass even the simplest of testing nor something that could have just happened over time).

[emfiliane]

Re: "set about installing one"

Daisy-chained Cat5 is one of those "technically it works... if you baby it and never push it too hard" things. So sure, wire tester would show working fine, some quick connectivity tests, but as soon as you really try loading it down it'll just keel over and all but die due to reflections and collisions. It'd be like having a 10mbps hub again.

[Rob Daglish]

Re: "set about installing one"

I've seen this - in the early days of smart boards, there was a company who I shall not name who made quite a decent living fitting boards "with all the wiring, and a new network socket" for a fixed price.

One of the teams figured out that they could save time by running the new network socket in each class from the old network socket, rather than back to the cabinet in the computer room. This went undetected for a while until some additional computers were procured, and I tried to share the printer between the two PCs in the class.

The PC connected to the original socket had a 100Mbps connection to the switch, and could see everything on the network, apart from the PC connected to the new socket.

The PC connected to the new socket had a 100Mbps connection to the switch, and could see everything on the network, apart from the PC connected to the original socket.

Took quite a while to get my head round what had happened, until I decided to run cable tests, which failed miserably and I took the faceplate off the original socket to check the wiring!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh dear

Reading through the horror tales above I'm ashamed to admit that I committed most of those DIY crimes on my first house in the early 1980s. My only defences are youthful enthusiasm, not knowing any better and lack of cash. The house is still standing, BTW.

[J.G.Harston]

Plastered....

It's not just electricians. Some years ago I was having my kitchen replastered. Beforehand I rewired it, proper horizontals and verticals, as a proper, sane, electrician (taking the opportunity to put the kitchen on its own circuit). One day I came home from work and the plasterer said: oh, I cut through a wire and popped a fuse, so I've replaced it. In poking around the damp plaster I found he'd cut a length halfway, and to rewire it he'd pulled it as tight as possible across a diagonal. Not only a diagonal, but being so tight it was straining to pop out of the sockets. I sighed, knocked off his plaster,and replaced the cable properly, proper horizontal and vertical. If he hadn't told me, than when I was fitting the cupboards I'd likely have drilled right through the cable being no longer in the defined safe zones.

[Anonymous Coward]

The File Server kept randomly conking out

The File Server kept randomly conking out, which necessitated a ten mile call-out. Happy coincidence I was there when the cleaner plugged her vacuum cleaner into the UPS block.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: The File Server kept randomly conking out

In an previous office we had cleaners who regularly plugged their vacuum cleaners into the desktop power sockets - which have a 2A fuse in them. The damn cleaner just went around the office blowing fuses until the found a socket that randomly didn't blow, as such is the variability of fuses). Similar was a member of staff that decided they were too important to use the kettle in the kitchen and brought their own kettle into the office to use on the same desktop power sockets with the inevitable fuse blowing results. Naturally, they tried hiding that they had done this...

[I could be a dog really]

Re: The File Server kept randomly conking out

I recall a call from a client - I wasn't on the hell desk, but I did get consulted. Apparently the UPS we'd provided must be a "pile of s**t" because it was sat there bleeping and driving people mad. This was odd because a) it had been working fine for a while, b) it was in a closed room and no-where near any desks. A colleague accessed the server with the UPS monitoring on and it showed it was in overload - hmm ...

So the customer was asked if they'd plugged anything in, especially into the spare sockets I'd carefully labelled "UPS maintained - IT only" in the "supposed to be kept locked" server room. Only a fan heater for the empty space upstairs we were told - "that was the only nearby socket".

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: The File Server kept randomly conking out

> Only a fan heater

The level of obliviousness many people have is so beyond. This actively refusing to think makes me speechless every time I encounter it.

[Ignazio]

Re: The File Server kept randomly conking out

A fan heater in the probably air conditioned server room. Oh.

[Toni the terrible]

Re: The File Server kept randomly conking out

Air conditioning is a problem in many offices, set too low for many people who not being able to change it (or in a war with those thinking its OK or too hot) bring their own solutions....

[I could be a dog really]

Re: The File Server kept randomly conking out

In this case the server room was to one side of an otherwise almost empty upper floor of the building - new building, and they wanted scope for expanding the office. So a user had run an extension cable from the nearest socket they could find to where they were working (counting brochures or something).

[Sceptic Tank]

Electrical Hazzzzard.

When I bought the house I'm in, it came with a electrical compliance certificate from a qualified electrician. The plug point for the washing machine is one of these that you would fit on an extension cord. It was connected to the oven using a length of 2 core electrical wire. Obviously there is no earth leakage. That somebody hasn't died in this house amazes me.

[Rick Mo]

WOW - REALLY??

Drill into a wall, in your work office building, without knowing WHAT is on the other side??

HighSchool shot to the FEET sort of mistake, HONESTLY!!

;-]

People should always ask, before blundering around, what is it that I DO NOT KNOW??? Of which I SHOULD KNOW???

Then, FIGURE it out, before picking up an "exploratory" drill set!!

;-]]

Life is HARD - however, not that DIFFICULT, REALLY!!!

[Will Godfrey]

I did my house

... luckily a year before the regs changed and (the infamous) part P came in to force. Nevertheless I followed all the rules for wiring that were in force at the time, but have no doubt at some future date someone will find something to complain about.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I did my house

I *ahem* "know someone who" is still doing work before part P came into force. Or that's what the inspector will be told when it eventually has to be checked.

I'm pretty sure nobody will ever look at the dates on the cables anyway.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: I did my house

Being pedantic, "Part P" is irrelevant. The entirety of Part P of the building regulations is :

P1. Reasonable provision shall be made in the design and installation of electrical installations in order to protect persons operating, maintaining or altering the installations from fire or injury.

Just one paragraph or 28 words. That's it. See page 2 of the approved document. doc.

What causes the confusion is that previously there wasn't a "part pee", so no law/regulation explicitly stating that electrical installations had to be safe ! But, at the same time, the building regulations changed to bring a lot more works into scope for notification (IIRC it was Annex 4, could have been 2, at the time) - including most electrical works beyond simple replacement of fittings and adding sockets to existing circuits. So for a lot of works, you had to either go down the notification route and pay a fee to your local council, or use a member of an approved scheme. Naturally, this provided a feeding frenzy for the charlatans who were quite happy to stir up the confusion in order to extract more money from the non-knowledgable public, and so "part pee" became synonymous with restrictions on doing your own electrical work.

In reality, there had been no change, anyone who is "competent" to design, install, and test the work is permitted to do it - all part P does is enshrine in law that it has to be safe. But the changes in building regulations notification requirements (which affect far more than just electrical works) meant that it became more complicated (and expensive) to do it legally. In 2013 the notification requirements were relaxed (part P was not changed) because it was recognised that the overall effect was to drive a lot of works "out of sight" and thus was creating hazards that would not be present if people could do stuff openly (and freely ask for help).

[Roopee]

Re: I did my house

They don't really need to look at the date on the cable - if "your friend" wants to convince someone that the work was done before 2005 then you, sorry he, needs to have a stash of red and black cable - using blue and brown T&E is a bit of a giveaway since it only became widely available around 2005 when the 2nd Amendment of the 16th Edition of the Regs mandated it for new installations in line with European colour harmonisation. Jus sayin'

[I could be a dog really]

Re: I did my house

Ah, but that blue/brown cable you see is a later replacement for when we [moved a socket|put a nail through the old one|insert your own excusereason here] and replacing an existing cable isn't notifiable.

It's interesting that the form you get asked to fill in when selling a property asks about electrical work done since 2005. I'd be very worried if there wasn't in most houses by now, and all they need to say is "don't know" for details and "don't have any" for documentation for the common situation of a house being sold by a deceased person's heirs.

[aerogems]

Back when I was in jr. high I took an "industrial education" class, or shop class as pretty much anyone else would know it. I remember how the teacher, usually a pretty unflappable sort, became suddenly very animated when he noticed one of my fellow students was about to use their reciprocating saw to cut through its own power cord. If memory serves, it survived with only some minor nicks to the casing. As soon as the rest of us figured out what had (almost) happened, we were disappointed at not being treated to a potential light show.

[Evil Auditor]

When drilling close to a switch or other power outlet, I always check in which directions the wires exit the existing socket.

For another Who, Me? I'd like to read something along the lines: "I dropped a tool bag. Now it's orbiting earth."

[spireite]

Did he swear when he did it?

I imagine he said.....

Fuk-Einhell

[BigKev]

Our last house was an Edwardian terrace with a lovely old metal bath. We usually had showers, but eventually fancied a deep relaxing bath. The bath was overfilled a bit and water sloshed through the overflow and a wet patch appeared on the kitchen ceiling. I took the side of the bath off and lo, there was no overflow pipework, which was what lead to the water pouring onto the floor of the bathroom and leaking into the kitchen below....but...also curled up under the bath now sitting in a puddle of water was a large coil of heavyweight electrical cable. I could see one end disappearing down through the floorboards and the other end just roughly cut off. I poked it with my tester the and the cut end showed a live cable! I was very lucky the cut end was on the top of the coil!

I called the previous owners and they said "Oh yes, we were going to have a shower installed but did get round to it", so presumably it had just been sitting there for quite a while :(

We decided to have a rewire at that point and the electrician had to call the supplier because he looked at where the cables came into the cellar before the meter and they were the original feeds from around the 1930s when first installed - they presented in a pipe and all the original insulation had perished - there were just two bare wires appearing out of a hole in the cellar wall!

Happy days!

[Apocalypto]

Back in primary school my brother accidentally cut the lawnmower's cable and called me to cone fix it.

Turned off the plug, got the tools, and headed out. But my mother's cousin was an electrician and his last words translates to "do you think I'm stupid" in response to his colleague asking if he was sure the breaker was open, so I asked my brother to go make sure the switch was off.

He dutifully turned the switch back on and I learned to always do my own double checking.

[J.G.Harston]

This is why you have pockets. Remove plug from socket, take it with you to the repair. Similarly, remove fuse from distribution board, put in pocket.

Obwhich, this is why I don't like modern wired MCB boards. You can't physically isolate the circuit by removing the protection device, you have to switch it off and either hope nobody switches it back on because they're annoyed the kettle's not working, or finagle some way of preventing it being switched back on and hope nobody hacks off the finagle.

[Killing Time]

Crucially, they also shared a single circuit for their power supply.

Has no one clocked that they would have to use a single circuit for both systems to use RS232 reliably?

Unlike most other protocols it's data lines are referenced to Earth/Ground. It was only ever designed as a short range protocol between a PC and a local device.

If it's used across different circuits any earth gradients degrade the data voltage differential and you will get random intermittent problems.

A common problem out in the field, back in the day.

[Richard Pennington 1]

Back in the olden days...

Well, by Cambridge standards, not the olden days, but in the very first days of fibre-optic cable telephones:

[1] The first rollout of fibre-optic cables to the people of Cambridge was organised so that a management company held the contract for the rollout, and the said management company then hired and paid the men with the JCBs who actually laid the cables. Then the management company went bust. This resulted in the men with the JCBs not being paid, and consequently threatening to back round the city ripping out the cables which they had just laid.

[2] One such cable installation ran across a courtyard in one of the colleges ... cutting through every gas, electricity and water pipe which had crossed that courtyard.

[Steve Hersey]

He was a "technician;" was he a *licensed electrician,* however?

The article isn't exactly clear on whether the Regomized fellow was actually licensed to do that job. It rather sounds like he wasn't...