Re: Moving an electricity meter

In message , tony sayer writes

Many, many years ago, the electricity board decided to replace my meter. It had probably been there for around 40 years.

No seal was fitted to the new one. The original was simply left cut and dangling, and looking suspiciously like it had been 'got at'. Despite numerous routine meter reader visits, took around five years before they got around to fitting a new seal. Presumably one of the readers noticed it, and reported it.

When this meter was replaced a couple of years ago, a new seal was also fitted.

A photo of this type of cable is here

I note that the neutral is connected to the local earth. Is that a PME system?

Some time in the 20s my Dad took out a whole street in Pimlico. His parents had left in in the tender care of his older sister while they went to the nearby cinema. He stuck a screwdriver in a brass socket and took out not just the house fuse but the whole street - including the cinema.

Parents came home to find a very startled boy and a rather melted screwdriver.

Yes, it is a PME supply.

WTF are you smoking???

This is even better than your install linux to fix a hardware problem post.

MBQ

Serious implications if you use any equipment with an additional earth system.

You have to do extra bits and pieces when the consumer unit is "at a distance" from the supply head:

The Natural Philosopher ( snipped-for-privacy@invalid.invalid) wibbled on Friday 18 February

EDF charge around 600-900 quid *and* they expect you to dig for them...

Don't talk such such a complete load of old bollocks. Work is carried out live all the time on low voltage cables, less often on lv overheads. Work is also carried out live on high voltage systems by specially trained teams.

An underground cable can quite easily be opened up and cut, and the live cores then jointed on to a new section of cable. Cable jointers go through extensive training and are then authorised as competent to carry out work on live LV systems

Please don't pontificate on subjects that you know absolutely nothing about.

Normal procedure is to just use 16mm T&E alongside a 10mm earth from a 80A fused isolator to the CU and be routed in such a way that RCD protection is not required under the 17th edition rules.

There is an isolating switch but no fuse/cut-out. Flat conversion in 1984

Mine looks just like that. Except that the original installer used black cable for live, and brown for neutral, between the fuse and the meter. Wonder if he was part-P registered? ;-) (probably not in 1973).

Cheers, David.

When I started work on television servicing at the beginning of the 60s, all TVs had the chassis connected to one side of the mains. Many also had reversible two pin connectors on the back, so there was usually a 50:50 chance that the chassis was live.

Soldering irons and test equipment were delberately un-earthed. (An earth-free area was acceptable to the Factories' Inspector in those days!)

So we happily went about our job handling these chunks of metal, never knowing if it was live or not but presuming, of course, that it was.

The building was being enlarged with completely new electrics.

A hole had been left in the new shop floor where the feeder ran into the adjacent building. The chap from the Eastern Electricity Board turned up, spread his rubber matter out over the edge of the concrete and spliced our new feed in.

When he left, we looked at each other and said "You wouldn't catch me doing something like that!"

In message , at 09:50:43 on Fri, 18 Feb 2011, Ronald Raygun remarked:

That depends on the cable. If it's an old one (and possibly 3-phase) in a solid sheath, it's not the sort of thing easily played with!

For example, if the thing he wants moving is the green box with black fuse unit (and mounting board) shown here:

Then you make sure you don't make a simple slop with a screwdriver

In message , MuddyMike writes

Is he going to give a toss?

Would he even know ?

They are bods doing jobs - paid by Siemens or whoever to read the meters, not to police installations

Good idea, how are you going to do that?

Oops - a simple slip there

In the same way that a brain surgeon doesn't take someone's eye out by accident

or, are you one of those people who have problems tying their own shoe laces