no idea laid this down on his screen :
Nothing at all to worry about, unless you buy and try to fit seals yourself. If you did, it would be obvious -
You lack the proper tool to do the crimping and the tool leaves a numbered impression traceable back to individual who sealed the meter. With neither, they might suspect an attempt at electricity theft.
You have nothing to worry about, I've ripped hundreds of them off over the years as have most builders, we need leccy to renovate houses...the E-board have never bothered us, they just 'start from scratch' when the new owner takes over.
Funny how people so often assume that their answer has immediately appeared on everyone else's newsreader.
Colin Bignell
No guarentee that all the news servers will have picked up your post at the time of writing though....
It did on the news server you are using......
Beg to differ, some REC will allow it if you contact them in advance.
And none will give a toss if you just go ahead without permission.
Christian.
On the occasions I've needed to, REC's have always been happy for me to break the seal (sometimes I asked before, sometimes I told them afterwards).
They rarely come back to reseal though. I did remind them a year afterwards, and there was still a note on the records for the meter reader to reseal it, but they never have done.
That still doesn't mean it appeared on my computer immediately you posted. My own posts won't appear until I log back on or do a refresh. The only comment I saw from you in the thread when I posted was the rather cryptic 'Leave well alone'. However, even had you posted a reply identical to mine, I would not see that as any reason not to reply also. Usenet is rife with replies that are ill-informed or even deliberately misleading, so often the only way a poster can decide which replies are accurate is to look for a consensus among a number of posters.
Colin Bignell
NEDL and YEDL certainly won't. Maybe its all the dodgy geordies winding their meters back that caused the clampdown. Official guidelines are apparently that any missing seal is sufficient cause for the usage profile of the account to be investigated.
Hmm - I wonder how they do this, since CE Electric (the owners of NEDL and YEDL) don't actually retail the stuff. All they could do is to tip off the supplier who holds the account.
Actualy CE Electric are quite reasonable in that they will fit an isolator for £50 all in.
That seems reasonable. I might just take them up on that offer.
I'm involved (for my sins as chief electrician) with a local amateur theatre for which we have a 3-phase supply, although it's really used as three separate supplies, one of which is used almost exclusively for stage lighting. The supply is fused at 63A per phase, although the dimmer packs used for stage lighting, if used at full capacity, would draw 360+ Amps (36 x 10A channels plus a bit for the dimmers packs themselves), so we have to be careful not to pop the incoming (blue phase) fuse too often... When we had a supply several years ago from NEEB (North Eastern Electricity Board), who did the actual physical supply AND sold us the electricity they would have given us an increased supply capacity without any charge, on the grounds that we would have used more energy, to tend to pay for the cost of the works. Sadly when/if we request a bigger supply it's gonna cost us lots! CE Electric will probably charge us the full cost of the works since they will gain nothing.
Some have been doing it for free on request, sometimes requiring you to have bought the appropriate parts before they turn up.
I spoke with a REC engineer who works on domestic cut-outs. His comment is that the RECs were all rather frightened that there would be some case of someone getting seriously injured or killed working on CU tail live, not having pulled the main cutout and not having an isolator. This could then result in HSE insisting everyone had an isolator fitted, which would be a mamouth and expensive task. This is why they much rather you pulled the main cutout than attempt to work on live tails, and some of them will come and fit an isolator cheaply or for free if asked. This conversation was about 4 years ago, before newer legislation which requires RECs to ensure everyone's meter and supply head is sealed.
Government has also been putting more pressure on energy suppliers in last couple of years to ensure they are keeping a better eye out for theft of energy. Apparently with all the changes in the energy supply industry structures, this has somewhat fallen by the wayside, and they were finding it cheaper to simply bump up the price to everyone else rather than track down those who are stealing it, rather like the leaky water mains. I don't know if there's actually been any change though.
Yep, especially as you can point out that you don't know which way is up.
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