Aagghh - lbooyd amateurs

[The Nomad]

What's wrong here?

Well whilst thinking about the ceiling & it's plasterboard I thought I get started on sorting out the cat's cradle that is the wiring in the space above the potential ceiling.

Tracing the cooker cable and decide that there must be a split some where, there is a hob and an oven not close to each other.

Take cover off the very tired looking cooker switch and find this ...

or

In at the top, out at the top to the oven & out to the hob at the bottom.

All I can say is

!

The isolator by the oven was wired OK.

So oven working with phase and neutral reversed for a very long time!

Oh the out to the hob runs diagonally down the wall and through the concrete slab to appear under the island unit - last bit OK but diagonally I ask you?

Nick

[george [dicegeorge]]

check that its a double pole isolator, I think old ones were single pole, which would only cut off the Neutral, perhaps. [g]

[The Nomad]

snip

It is double pole so not actually as bad as it looks but, really! And they had twisted the red & black together to get it in the whole designed for one on of them, so why did it not seem wrong?

Oh well, add it to the list of things I've seen but wish I hadn't

N

[Andy Dingley]

Only if they followed the colour coding at the far end. A surprising number of people seem to regard colour codes as just wire identifiers, not necessarily as functional codes.

[David Robinson]

Looking at the age of the wiring in your picture, that was probably still allowed (and therefore very common) when this wiring was installed. The Cooker and Immersion wiring was like this in our house

- similar vintage at a guess.

Cheers, David.