Electric - Is this true.....?

[troubleinstore]

I have been told that if I have some work done (new fuse board) on the electrics in my property by an electrician, then he is allowed to remove the electricity companies main fuse (even though it has a seal on it) to carry out the work and then it is upto me to ask the elctricity company to come and reseal the main fuse.

I was also told that providing he doesn't mess with the electric meter seals in anyway, this is quite acceptable and that I will not get into any bother by letting him do this.

Is this correct.....?

-- troubleinstore

mail can be sent via website. Email address in posting is ficticious and is intended as spam trap

[rition]

When my Dad changed his fuse board the electrician actually removed the meter seal as well and the electricity company simply replaced it when they changed his meter a couple of years later.

This appears to be standard practice.

[Christian McArdle]

Yes, except I probably wouldn't bother informing the electricity company afterwards. They usually couldn't care less.

Don't touch the main meter seal. There is no need to and it would look very suspicious. I did remove the seal on the meter connections, though, as I needed to extend the tails.

Christian.

[Andy Hall]

Yes - it is now common practice. You can call the electricity supplier afterwards and ask them to reseal it, but generally they are not interested. The important point is that there is no tampering with the meter seals.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[Alan]

Yes, this is fine. I did just this when I changed my consumer unit, and also removed the meter seal on the connections in order to fit new tails - like Christian. When the meter was changed a year or so later they did not ask any questions, replaced the meter and fitted new seals.

It is far far safer to remove the main fuse seal and pull the fuse, than try and change the CU live - as I've heard of some people doing in order to leave the seals intact - and the electricity companies know this.

Alan.

[Lurch]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 08:47:28 +0100, "troubleinstore" strung together this:

I'm not sure because I've not had much sleep and I can't read properly but it's normal practice to remove the seals on the meter terminal cover and the service fuse. Whether you bother to inform the electricity company afterwards is entirely up to you, I personally have never bothered and have removed thousands of seals.

[PJ]

Another option is to call your supply company and ask for an insoator switch to be fitted. They do these quite quickly and free of charge. That way you simply switch off the supply before the consumer unit. Useful!

[sPoNiX]

[Lurch]

On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 12:33:04 GMT, [e-mail] (sPoNiX) strung together this:

Theoretically the seals, but as the electricity boards are in such disarray no-one knows who's doing what so getting it done properly is a painful experience, and the sub-contracted meter readers generally couldn't care less what happens to the tails as that's a different companies responsibility.

[Christian McArdle]

Nothing. It would be theft. It isn't rocket science to do it and I bet a lot of scum do just this. They'll probably be discovered by the fact that a 4 bed house uses 0 units of electricity every month.

Christian.

[sPoNiX]

So basically the seals serve no purpose whatsoever?

[Christian McArdle]

Correct. They are intended to indicate fraud, but fail on two counts.

1) No-one checks them. 2) They are easily available for fraudsters to replace themselves.

Computers picking out unusually low usages for further investigation are far more reliable.

Christian.

[wanderer]

Oh, they do, the trouble is that so far with the whole privatisation process, security and fraudulent abstraction have probably dropped well down the list of 'must do' things for the supply companies. One of these days, someone in one of the companies will be idly thinking about the problem, and it'll come bubbling up to the top of the pile.

To anybody who's been following this thread, I'd say, go ahead and pull the main fuse if you feel competent so to do, don't break the meter terminal cover seals unless you need to change the tails to the consumer unit, and *do* telephone the local leccy company and tell them that you've done so. If they should start a purge on broken seals things could get a bit sticky.....

*Don't*, whatever you do, touch the seals that hold the cover proper on the meter. That the leccy companies are being a bit lax about the matter generally is neither here nor there. The legislation is quite strict, and weighted in the suppliers' favour - you've been warned.

Oh, and just to add a little confusion - some companies went through a spell of using self adhesive labels on the main fuses rather than seals.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I had a long chat with my electricity transporter when I was preparing my Part P response. They are apparently worried that at some point someone who didn't pull the fuse is going to get badly burned, and this could end up with all the supplies which don't have isolators being deemed unsafe, and them being forced to rapidly install isolators at all supply heads. So whilst it's strictly illegal for anyone other than them to pull the supplier's cutout, they would much rather you did it than you attempt to work with live tails.

[Ed Sirett]

About six months ago I posted the story of what happened when the meter tails dropped out of the meter on a property I was working on. You will have difficulty in finding the right number to tell whoever whatever.

I believe that data mining techniques are used to narrow the search on fraudsters. E.g. > 40% drop in power usage & same name on bill (to cover for empty properties).

[Andrew Gabriel]

I have a meter which no one has read for over 15 years now. About every ~5 years when the estimates have got way off, I remember to phone in a corrected reading.

At the time I replaced the CU in this house, the estimated reading was nearly 2 years ahead of actual readings, and I was concerned that breaking the seals might add some serious suspiscion to this. So in this case, I did change the CU with the tails live and without breaking the seal, although this is certainly not something I would suggest anyone else try. I was careful to turn the area into an earth-free zone and to wear clothing/mask which was likely to protect me against arc burns from accidently shorting out the supply.

[ARWadsworth]

I had a letter a few weeks ago saying that I had to have a safety inspection of my electricity meter and had only seven days to ring for an appointment. The meter has not been read in the 4 years since I moved in and I have never had seals on either the meter or fuse.

When I rang up to book the appointment I asked the person on the phone what the inspection involved. I was told it was to make sure the meter was safe and working correctly. After asking if the inspection was really a safety inspection and not just a meter reading exercise I was assured that it was a proper inspection. I removed the tails from the meter to the CU and had no electricity when they came to read the meter.

The meter readers read the meter and went without noticing.

I would not recommend this action but it shows how useless the suppliers and sub contractors are.

Adam

[G&M]

There's an industrial unit in Cheshire (won't say where) where all the outside lighting is from verically placed flourescent tubes, lit 24 hours a day from the electric field from the pylon virtually overhead. Not sure if the internal lighting is the same or not.

But the place gives me such a headache I don't know how anybody actually works there.

[Rick Dipper]

I had a similar letter, the guy told me that he was a meter reader, and had no ideas what all the wires and stuff were for.

On the steeling electric front there are two more ways

1) put an induction loop under a High Voltage line 2) connect directly into the Low Voltage over head line.

Rick

[Jb]

The most common way of detecting fraud now is through the readings. Any change greater than 15% -/+ (for my company at least) is marked for attention. Twice in a row and a discrete visit is arranged.

Andrew is quite right, it's preferable to have a fuse seal broken than a human being although it is strictly speaking a no no.

Sadly most of the other posters are also correct and the RECs are in something of a shambles but it will be just your luck to be one of the few who do get caught if you try fiddling. No we don't take people to court anymore, you get a card meter with debt recovery settings and a computer programme keeps an eye on usage.

So break the seal, do what you have to do and then ask them to come and reseal it.