Part P gone mad

[Andrew]

Having just had consumer unit and tails upgraded I called my electricity supplier to enquire about having the main fuse upgraded from 60A to 100A to match the main breaker in the consumer unit just in case I ever needed the extra juice. They put me on to EDF who apparently do that work. Nice lady at EDF tells me that there is a form that must be completed for them to consider the request. Form duly dispatched.

Form, when it arrives turns out to be not duly arduous. Most difficult technical question concerns whether the supply is single phase or three phase. Other questions deal with combined power requirements of oven and hob, whether there is a washing machine/tumble dryer/ dishwasher and how many storage heaters there are.

A note at the bottom advises that the form should be completed by a suitably qualified electrician and if it is not then formal approval for the works must be provided by the local authority's Building Control Department. Surely the people that they send to do the work will be suitably qualified? And since when has Part P notification been required for counting storage heaters?

More jobs for the boys.

Andrew

[dom]

It's probably a general form used by EDF for a variety of work - some of which may require notification of building control.

You haven't got to the fun bit yet - EDF charged me 280 quid for 25 minutes work to move the cutout and shorten the incomers.

[Andrew]

Ouch! They haven't mentioned a charge for changing the fuse yet. In as much as they do specifically say that if the earthing arrangements need to be upgraded then there will be a charge. If its going to cost then I will probably elect not to have it done. It's not exactly essential since the supply coped quite happily with a 60A fuse when it still had storage heaters

Andrew

[Andrew Mawson]

I managed to blow my 60a fuse - it was to my knowledge at least 22 years old and I have a home workshop with large motors with heavy starting currents. It was a Sunday - I called EDF and they had a man here in under ten minutes (!!!) - it took very little persuasion to get him to put a 100 amp one in !

AWEM

[Lobster]

Maybe you could lend the OP one of your machines for an hour...? ;-)

David

[robgraham]

Maybe wear welding goggles, a heavy pair of gloves and using a sacrificial screwdriver might be easier! Perhaps in the middle of a work day rather than risk a weekend.

Rob

[meow2222]

With a pssc of anything upto 6kA that could be explosive. Exploding red hot things are kinda frowned on here - more popular in America.

NT

[dom]

After the house has burnt down, the burns have healed, and the insurance company laughed at the claim - it might not seem like such a good idea.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It is apparently not uncommon in the US for an electrician to switch off the circuit they want to work on by shorting it out. Sometimes, the results are exactly as you describe.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A neighbour has ancient wiring and little money so sort of asked my advice about making things safe in the most economical way. One major concern I had was that there was no proper earthing arrangements, and thought that should be sorted before getting quotes for the re-wiring. So on her behalf I contacted EDF about having an earth clamp fitted to the incoming cable.

The pro forma invoice that arrived stated the existing installation has to have a completed test certificate before they will carry out any alteration to the meter or termination position. And the minimum charge will be 147 quid. Plus VAT, of course.

Seems to me a chicken and egg situation. Can a certificate be provided on even a new installation with nothing to earth it to?

[dom]

Its a bit weird - I provided a new consumer unit with just a double socket, tails and earth (water pipe) bonds attached - at the position I wanted the incomers moved to.

So I borrowed a 16th Ed tester, and dutifuly filled out the IEE test forms - the vast majority of the entries being blank - and not one of the engineers even glanced at the forms whilst they were here.

[Broadback]

Why can you not remove the fuse, then damage it in some way, replace and ask them to come and fix it? So the seal is broken, well I reckon that many are, certainly mine was when I came to this house, my daughters is also.

[Dave Liquorice]

Depending on how close the point of SC and the state of the cabling bewteen it and the substation the PSCC current could be a lot more than

6kA. But yes it'll make a very big bang, I wouldn't like to be in the same room as bits of molten metal go flying about the place.

Making the assumption that the volts drop to about 160 when supplying 6kA you are still looking at 1MW of power being dissipated in a very small space.

[<me9]

I remember a leccy board engineer replacing an 80A service fuse, backed up by a 100A fuse on the other side of the wall which had also blown (no discrimination!) (in an attached substation) when the fault (A direct short to earth protected by a 6A MCB, which although it hadn't tripped wasn't faulty) was still attached. Tha air turned blue (in more ways than one, I won't comment on the colour of his underwear either).

He refused to try another fuse (I wonder why?) until we'd found the fault.

[Lobster]

I've done the same thing in the past, in order to provide myself with a live double socket with then provided the power I needed to wire up the property! Didn't seem to cause the engineers any problem.

David

[Lurch]

On 27 May 2007 15:31:55 -0700, Andrew mused:

I just happened to be at home when the chap from somewhere came out and changed the meter so while he was there I made sure he stuck a

100A fuse in and that the tails were 25mm from cutout to meter. Offered him coffee but he refused and did the work anyway.

[Andy Hall]

Must be a bugger trying to wire up such short tails.....

[Lurch]

On Mon, 28 May 2007 19:59:32 +0100, Andy Hall mused:

Erm, yeah, or no......

Must admit, you've lost me on that one. Sorry.

[Andy Hall]

How could one install the cutout 25mm from the meter? :-)

[Lurch]

On Mon, 28 May 2007 20:22:34 +0100, Andy Hall mused:

Well, smartarse, you can get connection kits that are basically 25mm of tails so the meter just drops on top of the cutout. ;)

Although you knew I meant 25mm CSA but haven't got a ^2 option.