In the Evening Standard last night.
Made me think to invest in a good wiring detector for drilling holes etc.
Fact is, there are many incredibly stupid people out there who will just drill a hole without thinking about what is underneath. Perhaps they are those who never received an accidental jolt as a child. Once felt, you never, ever forget it. Could it be that all school children need to be exposed to, say, an electric fence at least once during their education?
MM
Many new house builders give these free in the starter pack.
In The Times this morning the story hinted that they might sue the builders. Sigh.
The builders may be at fault to some degree, but the man who installed the rack, when cable detectors have been around for along time now, is the culprit. I doubt the builders would be roasted.
Except that you are supposed to install vertically from fittings or more than 50mm deep for the precise reason to avoid electrocution when fixing to the wall. They must bear partial responsibility.
Christian.
In article , TimD writes
If they'd been a whole house RCD on that system then she'd still be alive, as it would have tripped on the main event, and very likely would have started tripping when other shocks or tingles were noticed.....
Is 5cm deep really the recommended depth? I tend to just go as deep as the plaster is. Once I hit brick that is it.
And is this just a recommendation or compulsory.
Steve
Possibly. However, it would be very difficult to check for depth of wiring after the installation was complete. And extremely time consuming to check the route of every cable with a detector - and not that reliably either.
The existing regs if observed would have prevented this. But no regs can prevent bodging - unless they provide for a thorough independant inspection.
Or protecting with a RCD - although I know this can cause problems with kitchen appliances.
The Standard report is quite detailed, and supports Christian's point. The original fitters were the primary cause of this death, by cavalier routing of a mains cable which "meandered across the wall instead of being fitted in strict horizontal or vertical lines". This was the cooker hood feed cable. The metal rack which became live was put up some time later by the householder: "Mrs Wherry's husband Jake put up the rack three years ago and thought he had positioned it away from any cables, although he did not check."
You could call his failure to check contributory negligence, or (in less lawyerly speak) what happens when you assume - "it makes an ASS out of U and ME" in the trite health-and-safety mantra. Another bit of householderly incomplete cluefulness comes across in the next paragraph: "Evidence to the inquest from electrical engineer David Latimer, who examined the kitchen, was that a screw from the rack had caught the side of the electrical cable. Over the years the rack and screw had moved slightly so that eventually the screw touched the live wire in the cable. Every time a metal object was put on the rack there was a small electric shock."
You'd-a-thunk that 'this rack gives me a tingle every time I touch it' would serve as a Clue that there was something wrong. Sadly, it didn't raise enough of a response: an earlier portion of the report says, "Mrs Wherry's family became suspicious that something was wrong in the kitchen after a family friend tried to put something onto the same rack, which was under the cooker hood, that same day and received a small shock." We can't tell from the report whether such tingles had been felt on previous occasions.
That "small shock" became fatal for this victim when she was in simultaneous contact with the live rack and a good earth: "But Mrs Wherry's shock was fatal because her ankle is believed to have been touching the metalfronted open door of the dishwasher." (A sadly persuasive illustration of the downside of bonding everything to a good earth, as raised not an hour ago in the "bond the kitchen sink" discussion). The "believed" in the quote is a bit of journalistic silliness, as the next para goes on to describe the 2.5-inch discolouration around the victim's ankle, making it all too clear what path the fatal current had taken.
The coroner seems to agree that the primary fault is with those who installed this cable in a non-obvious, regs-defying route: "Coroner Alison Thompson said that Mrs Wherry would have survived if the cable had been properly installed. Recording a verdict of accidental death she said: 'The cable had not been fitted in accordance with regulations from the Institute of Electrical Engineers.'"
The final comment reported by the coroner leaves it ambiguous, though, whether she felt some blame attached to the householder too: "I am going to record that the death was the consequence of home improvement work."
- from which I, at least, can't tell whether the coroner has in mind the earlier kitchen fitting work with its misrouted cable, or the husband's fitting of the metal rack.
An RCD on the kitchen circuit would've prevented this particular fatality; the not-well-earthed tingle reported earlier in the day might have been enough to trip it, with the inconvenience possibly giving the occupants more reason to investigate the fault, and certainly the victim would've been massively unlikely to have received a fatal shock, rather than a stiff belt strongly suggesting a need to Get It Fixed.
And - as others have pointed out - cable/metal detectors before drilling are A Good Thing, as is a healthy scpeticism and a curiousity about where cables and pipes are running - 'just where does that cooker hood get its power from, huh?'. This cable might not have registered as Live (rather than just Metal) without the cooker hood being switched on, mind you...
Stefek
For cables not running in the "standard" routes, it's mandated by the Regs: 5cm (2 of your earth inches) is what the regs-writers consider to be deeper than a casual picture-hook or small-fitting-wallplug will go. If the cable runs in the "standard" routes (once again: a 6-inch/15cm band vertically and horizontally from each visible fitting, and a similar-width band around the top and side BUT NOT BOTTOM corners of each room), the 5cm depth is *not* required.
The other approved way of running cables in the non-standard routes is to provide hefty additional protection: in practice that would mean serious metal (which would need to be earthed), such as heavy-duty conduit or trunking. Galvanised capping isn't protection enough - it's easily penetrated by a nail (which is how you usually fix it!).
HTH - Stefek
Well the fact is the d*****ad D-I-Y er put a screw through a cable, and didn't earth the appliance.
Hey presto. What happened to te RCD, and all teh earths on everything else?
Is this from the centre of the fitting or from the edges?
Steve
Last night's London Evening Standard said the same. It also said that people had been getting small shocks from this rack well before the accident, but unfortunately for the victim her leg was touching the dishwasher when she touched the rack. The 'electrician' who installed the hood may have done a poor job but this looks to be an accident that should not have happened.
My take on this is "Death by lack of common sense":
1) Fitter of wire rack not checking for cables beforehand. 2) Getting a small shock from the wire rack but ignoring it.You can have all the regulations in the world but none will protect against a lack of common sense. Surely it is common sense to assume that a cable could be anywhere in the vicinity of a cooker hood. Also why the hell would anyone ignore an electric shock, were they hoping the problem would just go away?
Why not just wrap everybody in bubble wrap the moment they are born and earth them! Jesus!
Steve
I normally use rawlplugs, or equivalent and have always assumed that most of the risk was to the electric drill operator - though much of the drill is plastic. Post installation the rawlplug itself would provide some insulation.
It just shows that if you ever get an unexpected electric shock, the cause should be investigated.
My experience of an electric wiring detector was that it did not work as well as I would have liked.
Michael Chare
"More than 50mm" would be over half way through many of my walls and dangerous from the other side.
:(
I think an interesting and telling question is "what if the cable had followed the correct path? Does your avearge weekend shelf-putter-upper even know about where cable runs are allowed to go? Would he have avoided putting a hole there, thinking "ah, I'm within the 150mm band, there might be a cable here"? I'm willing to bet 9/10 wouldn't.
I think if you aren't inclined to check for cables then you're unlikely to think about where they might be in the first place.
I think the only solution is to require all cables to be enclosed in
1.5mm wall galvanised conduit. You wait, it'll come.Related but OT - I installed a replacement extractor fan in the downstairs toilet this weekend. The instructions said that it must only be fitted by a qualified electrician. Fair enough. Then there was a section about cleaning, which said that the cover should be removed, and the motor cleaned once a month. It then went on to say that this should only be done by a qualified electrician!! So I'm supposed to book a qualified electrician to come round once a month to clean all my extractor fans??
I've never got on with those things - I must either have metal walls, or 2ft wide cables running through them. Luckily whoever rewired the house wasn't that great a plasterer, so it is possible to make out the vertical runs up the walls as a slight uneven ridge!
Bob
Looking at the merely-suggestive pictures in the OSG, the 6-inch-wide band is shown only for the top and side corners, while the horiz-and-vert from visible accessories is drawn a little narrower than the visible accessory's own size. I think Good Sense is what's indicated here: no-one's going to condemn an install if the "horizontal" line dips by an inch below the bottom of the accessory; running cables willy-nilly is clearly Right Out; keeping them within or very close to the Expected Routes is absolutely the Right Way To Go. Remember the overall requirement for "good workmanship"; if an otherwise compliant installation has one bit of cable routing which strays 5cm beyond a Permitted Route, no-one's going to moan; if the installation is full of little corner-cutting tricks, compliant-but-non-standard tricks, and so on, such routing deviations are all grist to an inspector's mill - who in a case like this is coroner-appointed and not looking to be overcharitable...
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