Bringing the house down...

A tale of woe for your entertainment:

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Reply to
John Rumm
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In message , John Rumm writes

Back in about 1968 my father had central heating fitted. It was an old house with wired fuses and lead covered wiring. A day or so after the heating was finished the lights in the lounge started to flicker quite alarmingly. We all sat there and wondered why? Eventually the fuse on the single, whole house, lighting circuit blew. Father replaced the wire link with what ever was to hand, I recall it was probably 30A Well it was all he had, he was a chemist, not an electrician :-) The lights flickered for a while and then the fuse blew again.

Ah well too much excitement for one evening so we went to bed, by candle light.

Next morning a large damp patch on the lounge ceiling.

Ah ha, water in the lights?? Blowing a 30A bit of fuse wire??

Well yes, sort of. Plumber had slid some 1/2" copper under the upstairs floor boards, over a length of rather old lead covered cable.

I really wish we had taken photos of the evidence, as it was the plumber replaced the holey pipe and a friendly sparky replaced the length of cable.

House was rewired in about 1980 and all was well until father decided to position a picture on a wall in the hall, directly above a 3 gang light switch. A while later he complained that he was getting a tingle off the plaster near the switch, it was a rather damp house, even with the central heating! A volt stick would light any where within about 18" of the nail!!!!!!

Reply to
Bill

Yes well, lots of stories like that about. One I know of was a caravan, long retired had been placed into service as a workshop in a garden, and mains electricity fitted. However constant rubbing on the underside metal frame of the ordinary pvc insulated wire used from the house had managed to make the live occasionally touch the metal frame of the caravan and intermittently people were getting significant shocks from metal bits of the innards. Eventually the fuse blew in the house and not only was this fault traced buyt some creature had managed to nibble through the insulation in about four places on the cable run as well. An accident waiting to happen. When I had my sheds wired I opted for armoured cable!

Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

Could have been thermal movements, could also have been fretting from small amplitude vibration in the system.

Nice photos!

Reply to
newshound

The first house we bought needed everything doing to it. Including replacing the wiring which looked as if it dated from before the dawn of electricity. We were living in the house so I decided to keep using the old circuits whilst installing the new. It was easy enough to avoid the old circuit - especially since there was only one or fewer sockets per room, one ceiling light, etc.

Or at least it should have been. Chasing out a channel for a wall light with hammer and cold chisel (this was the '70s) I suddenly revealed a black, then a red bit of rubber - thankfully no more than that. The original installer had simply buried the single conductors diagonally under the plaster. This -erme- slowed my installation down a tad since I'd now only chisel in daylight with the mains turned off.

Nick

Reply to
Nick Odell

Pretty sure it was thermal - there is no vibration that you can feel or hear in the system and it is a very long straight run of 22mm that is fixed at the far end. Some form of galvanic action was also a possibility.

Looking at the scale deposit on the pipe, suggests that it had been leaking for a while - but possibly at a rate where it evaporated before causing any problems. It also occurred to me, that having relatively recently fitted a scale inhibitor (phosphate doser) to house hot water supply, that may have prevented scale from resealing the hole quite as effectively.

Reply to
John Rumm

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Well written story, John; I'm not sure I would have had the presence of mind, or the will, to photo it all.. I have a very similar eaves area in our extension section - I'm now passed the three score and ten, and it is probably 15 years since I last crawled along it.

Your tale of woe had me trying to remember if there were any possibly similar disaster sources along there, as equally the pipe runs are long. I don't think there are - and am b****y well hoping my memory is up to scratch !!

Rob

Reply to
robgraham

The driver for the need to photograph, was that I knew I had no other easy way of looking at the underside of the 22mm pipe given its position (and my phone was easier to find than a small mirror)

One reason for writing it up (other than "venting" on a rather less than entertaining weekend) - prior to then I had never really given the possibility that one pipe might saw its way through another much thought.

Reply to
John Rumm

It happened to us, although rather less catastrophically. The CH pipes were fitted a few years before we moved in, and there were two packed closely together in a notched joist under the landing. Nothing in between them. Minute movements as people walked down the landing eventually caused a pinhole - it must have taken 15 years.

We noticed the water dripping out of the celing fitting in the hall.

Reply to
Bob Eager

A photo of John fixing it is missing:-)

Reply to
ARW

Always safest behind the camera ;-)

Reply to
John Rumm

I feel your pain.

Could it have been down to different grades of not 100% copper in the pipes - ie the harder one cutting through the softer?

Reply to
Lobster

That is also possible... the 15mm pipe is probably older and seems to have a thick wall, so it might be fully annealed rather than half hard.

Reply to
John Rumm

Very common with refrigeration systems. Vibration from the compressor is the source of the movement.

Doesn't need to be pipe-to-pipe - pipe rubbing against anything hard can do it, even a bit of loose grit over time.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

Interesting story, thanks for posting it.

Have you replaced the worn section of the 22mm pipe? ;-)

Reply to
Onetap

No, I photographed and felt the underside of it, and also could not feel any deformation or indentation (the smaller pipe you can seen and clearly feel a dished section in it). The 22mm pipe is also part of a sealed heating system, so it is limited in how much it could leak!

Reply to
John Rumm

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