Shall I contact the builder and suggest that to him? It's only been ten years since he constructed FORTY houses and bungalows to the same spec, which, of course, passed all the building regs, but I'm sure he'll be very keen to hear the opinion of a contributor to uk.d-i-y, and will probably take steps to retrofit all the properties, plus several hundred more he's constructed in the area, then finally hand himself in to the ElektroStasi.
MM
Shall I contact the builder and suggest that to him? It's only been ten years since he constructed FORTY houses and bungalows to the same spec, which, of course, passed all the building regs, but I'm sure he'll be very keen to hear the opinion of a contributor to uk.d-i-y, and will probably take steps to retrofit all the properties, plus several hundred more he's constructed in the area, then finally hand himself in to the ElektroStasi.
MM
It being 10 years since the houses were built and the Regs changed in 2008, he was right - at the time. New work, on the other hand, should comply with the current regs.
Despite the fact this is uk.diy, some contributors are professionally qualified.
Polish buiders , contact the polish embassy
when are you moving to germany how many children do you have
Im from Boston the centre of the world
Fair enough. So it shouldn't be used where cables are loose, then.
Good show.
I should emphasise that I'm not, not in the sense of being allowed to sign off electrical work, not even close. I'm working at it from the pov of someone with O-level physics or better, and in particular who has lived in the US and seen what a mess it is there, with low voltage provision (leading to twice the current, requiring fatter cables) and their rubbish plugs and sockets. Except that sometimes it's 240V, so e.g. my washer/dryer had 240V provision, with yet another plug type.
What does anyone think of these things:
which are how you connect two or more wires together in a US domestic setting. Inside the connector, not visible in the pix, is a coiled up wire spring, which grips the wires as you twist them into it.
Indeed, and its not intended to be.
Strange, then, how the builder managed to pass the requisite building regs. After all, he fitted an awful lot of them.
MM
To answer the question you pose beside pic 3, the tabs are designed to be they way they are shown (i.e. you have not bent them).
You fold the long length up vertically as shown in the pic on the right and side and slide it into the hole. As you push it home the annulus of the hole in the ceiling eventually pushes on the short tabs, and that forces the long ones to rotate. Eventually the short tabs are pushed and held vertically downwards by the edge of the plasterboard. This causes the long ones to apply downward pressure to the top of the plasterboard, thus retaining the whole thing tightly in place.
Well keep in mind that the contributor in this case (i.e. Adam) is a fully qualified and trading professional electrician. ;-)
Terminations on lighting circuits are IME something that have historically often been poor; how may times have you seen a lump of choc block stuffed into a ceiling void, with no overall insulation at all, or at best some PVC tape wrapped round it?
In recent times more focus on these practices has lead to better availability of better suited junction boxes and other connection systems for lights. Chances are your house builders sparks will use different methods now.
The risks associated from stress on terminations with what you currently have are minimal[1] IMHO in this circumstance, so I would not worry about it too much. If doing the installation from scratch I would do it different, but whether I would change it now is a different matter. However it would be remiss of those in the group with the appropriate knowledge to not highlight where practices and materials have improved, and which could lead to a better job being done.
[1] This assumes that the space they are in is just a ceiling void rather than say loft space where people might be romping about in among the loose cables.
See my other post on this...
However I don't find it surprising that it "passed" since:
1) While its not perfect, its far from bad (loose choc blocks in the ceiling void etc)2) "Passing" would likely be down to the say so of the electrician who installed it anyway, rather than any additional oversight or inspection.
It seems as if there is a certain amount of unwarranted "emotion" and confrontation running away in this thread...
To me its not actually obvious why the JB is there at all, since the mains supply could have terminated directly at the transformer (which does have a cable grip) although that does not leave you any place to neatly terminate the spare earth wire in the cable. It may be that the one pictured is the exception though, and other light positions have multiple cables entering the JB which would make it necessary.
Also its worth considering the original installation conditions - it may be that the downligting was specified after first fix, and the electrician had to work from below the ceiling. With the choice of lighting junction boxes available at the time the place was built, he might not have had much choice to do it different - you can't easily screw a JB to a joist and hammer in cable clips though an 80mm hole in a ceiling!
Lost his wallet whilst walking, or so I believe
Lost his wallet whilst walking, or so I believe
michael mitchell is so tight he parks his car in the shade to stop the petrol evaporating
vote ukip
polish builders
When he found the packet of corn plasters his next pair of shoes was one size too small
When he found the packet of corn plasters his next pair of shoes was one size too small
loool
You can blame the nitpickers and point-scorers for that.
MM
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