Having a loft conversion done. For the sake of convenience, I'm getting them to do the electrics, even though I have a BN open on a full rewire. Otherwise, I wouldn't get the completion cert for the loft until I finish the electrics - which could be a while.
Got off to a bad start with their electrician, who will remain nameless to protect the guilty, because I'd rewired one smoke on the 1st floor lights. (and a three core lighting loop all round that circuit so I have an interconnect) He wants the smokes on the second floor lights. OK, fair enough, I get that he doesn't want to touch my circuits, he'd rather have a brand new one so he doesn't have to be responsible for my work - but wait to see what happens next. That said, I still think that the smokes would be better on the first floor circuit than the second, which might not be in use.
Today, the next electrician (different to the first one, so probably been told to watch out for me...) was planning to run the cable back to the CU. He'd done some cable pulling and I popped upstairs while he was getting something from the van to see how he was running the cables.
First, I noticed his drill bit in the stairs trimmer. Odd, I thought, he hasn't pulled up the remaining piece of floor trim to see where he's....
<f--- me what was that-->Processed for a second, then went downstairs and explained that I think I just got a belt off a pipe. He clearly didn't quite believe me, because he proceeded to go upstairs, and get a belt off the same pipe. That really pissed me off.
"Have you got your gas and water bonding sorted?"
"yes"
"You haven't got any bare wires under here"
"No!" (or what I though "No, FFS"
I then realised he was drilling into the stairs trimmer. And hadn't pulled up the small piece of flooring (with only one nail holding it down, as I've lifted it loads) between that trimmer and the next one. Lifted it up and showed him he wasn't drilling into one trimmer, but two, with a gap. His drill bit and metal body was shorting phase to a pipe doing who knows what when it was installed. Nothing now, because it wasn't actually bonded to anything at all.
I left him to fix it, muttering about awful cable routing. He's not wrong, but I didn't route those cables, and I do know where *most* of the cables in the house go. Plus I found the gap between the trimmers, he just assumed there wasn't one.
He is, of course, mortified. I am just feeling mortal, I'm a bit (a lot) smaller than he is, and I've never had a proper shock before. We're both glad it was me who found it and not one of the kids (though my kids are well trained to step round things and would almost certainly not have made contact with his drill). Also, the fault wouldn't have shown up in testing, it's just a fluke that I touched the pipe while the drill was shorting it. Bit puzzled as to why his drill didn't provide a route to earth through the plug.
It could, of course, have been avoided, if he hadn't assumed it was a thick trimmer, and explored it properly, or indeed asked me anything at all about cable routes in this house. But I'm the DIYer, so.... I still haven't actually checked where the cables ran - all I wanted was to make sure he hadn't put them right next to my network cables.
Feeling glad that I have put an RCD in (though it didn't trip, I'd hate to have a shock which did make it trip!) and that I wasn't earthed to anything, and that I touched it with the back of fingers.
I pointed out to him that it was a good job he electrocuted me and not one of his other customers who might not have been quite so understanding. Naturally it's the first time he's done that to a customer. I suppose most of them don't poke around under the floorboards to see what he's just been doing.... Though as he pointed out, if I hadn't, he'd have pulled the drill out and left a latent fault there, because it wouldn't have shown in testing. It would have shown when I was sticking my hand down the gap pulling a cable through.
I'm debating whether I should cross bond the floating pipe to the copper water pipe next to it. If the floating pipe went live again, and someone was touching the copper pipe, they could get a much worse result. Can't think of any reason not to if it's truly floating (something I will verify).