Unexplained electricity cuts to our house only - HELP!

[Peter Boulton]

Underground.

Though talking to the call centre this evening they seem to think it is overhead. Definitely not though, unless invisible wires are a modern advance that have passed me by!

Pete

[Peter Boulton]

OP here - I've inserted my responses in your quoted text. Thanks for taking the time and trouble to respond (and also to all the other people on this thread!)

Pete

----- Original Message ----- From: "The Wanderer" Newsgroups: uk.d-i-y Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 7:02 PM Subject: Re: Unexplained electricity cuts to our house only - HELP!

I definitely won't be manually shorting the power!

Pretty sure, although the house on one side of me is not habited at the moment. From past cuts I think we are part of just 3 houses on one circuit, or whatever it's called. But I'm pretty sure it's just us.

> Do you live in a town or a rural location?

Village / rural. Just outside Amersham

Underground, definitely

I think my cheapo surge protector 6 way adaptor. Nothing else... yet.

It's really anything from 30 second to at least 20 minutes, or even longer. Definitely.

Sometimes, but at most others it's definitely minutes, and sometimes definitely well over 20 mins.

The cut seems so localised, and the power company presumably has some knowledge of this. And to the best of my knowledge it's just our house.

We're definitely underground. When we had a new boiler put in in July the electrician told us that the house's earth reading was dangerously high (>7?) and the electricity company came and fixed something in the pavement to get the reading down to near zero. Do you think there is any chance that this repair may have deteriorated and be causing our problem>

Too right! The call centre is sympathetic and professional, for a call centre, but they seem quite keen to suggest it's on my side of the meter! It's impossible to talk to anyone from them who might have any insight on this.

Thanks. I hope so! We're having an electrician out tomorrow hopefully to check our side of the meter. Presumbly checking the consumer unit, connections to and from etc.. Anything they should specifically be checking? I suspect it'll be a case of paying out and not getting a solution, but at least then the onus will be on the supply company.

[Dorothy Bradbury]

Since your supply is underground... o Let the electrician check it is not "your side"

---- he will also check Earth (Fault) Loop Impedance (ELI)

---- if that is again high that will need correcting o Ask the electrical supplier for a logging meter

---- that will gather data on the fault, duration & time

---- perhaps tallying with repair work or required work

If the fault is localised to those houses (or your house), then the outage duration still suggests manual intervention.

One query is whilst your supply is underground, is the supply to your area above ground a short distance away.

Read the reply by Wanderer.

[tony sayer]

There were certain types of underground connector that left a lot to be desired!...

Expect they will, you sometimes have to put your foot down with them..

Well not a lot to go wrong really as long as the screws are all tight..

Anyone check the supply fuse by substituting with another one?..

[John Rumm]

You need a new UPS then. This is precisely the sort of thing it is meant to protect your from and it is obviously not doing it!

[The Wanderer]

Southern Electric. Email me off group, and I'll give you some pointers to get things resolved. The addy below will find me.

[The Wanderer]

As an ex-distribution engineer, I'm quite certain the problem is with the supply network, not his installation.

I'm also quite certain it's on the HV system, and extremely unlikely to be on the lv network.

A little knowledge is dangerous.......

[Huge]

Peter, do you think you could not top post, please? It is not the custom on this group.

?toppost your OE fixed here;

[Huge]

The Natural Philosopher amply re-justifies his killfile entry. Again.

[The Natural Philosopher]

;-)

Using rubber gloves an an insulated screwdriver.

It does seem that there is a bit of humour failure here.

Nevertheless, it is a technique.

What confuses me is that no one else is affected - typically an overhead line fault takes out an entire neighborhood.

What I am wondering is if the OP has a 'transformer up a pole' like I` used to have, with some kind of self resetting fuse..

If it wasn't for the 'no one else is affected' I'd go for a dodgy overhead 11KV feed..arcing insulator..tree branch across lines etc..

I had one of THOSE once..nice arc tracking down a ceramic insulator on a pole in the middle of a field ..I reported it and men in vans were there inside of the day.

Anyway its pretty clear that there is a dodgy connection/short that is the power suppliers responsibility.

Crowbarring the supply was really a slightly humorous suggestion to make the intermittent fault permanent..or at least blow enough wiring to make them have to replace it all including the dodgy bits.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ok..what is probably happening is that there is an overhead llKV feed that drops down to a VERY small substation that feeds just a few houses.

And you are at the end of that feed...probably there is a fault on the overhead..but no one else near you is on that phase.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Thats all right Huge, My posts are intended for people of intelligence and some vestiges of humour.

They wouldn't do you any good anyway.

[tony sayer]

Now I've seen this done last year when we had a customer with an intermittent fault. Bloke had a box that was a "resetable fuse" with some f*ck off size contactors therein so that it replaced the fuses in the substation switching and was worked by remote control from behind his van!.

Was making much about tying the cables from it down, as they jumped around a bit. Anyway retiring to a safe distance they went up several feet into the air when the switch was fired off!..

Not something you'd like to do in a domestic setting!..

They found the fault by standing along the line of the cable and judged that on where they felt the underground explosions we coming from with their feet!....

[Peter Boulton]

Sorry Mr. Chief Inspector. Are you going to arrest me?

Come on mate, I've got a problem here and I don't need the netiquette police on the case thanks. You probably need to get a life and I (still) need my power fixed, OK?

Pete

[Bob Eager]

Don't be so childish. He's perfectly right.

Now, you can ignore him, in which case you'll probably get killfiled by quite a few people and reduce the usefulness of the group to you. Your choice.

[Stephen Dawson]

It is called a REZAP and made by Kellman. I was one of the first fault technicians in the UK to use it and currentlyown one for my own business.

Sure fire way of a fault location, a bit crude but very accurate!!

Rgds

Steve Dawson

>

[Stephen Dawson]

You reckon its an autorecloser then?? I think either the cutout, mater or service joint.

Rgds

Steve

[Peter Boulton]

typing, but I suppose if Microsoft does it at the top then there will be loads of people who absolutely insist that bottom is right! However, as the net should be a force for good let's not quarrel, eh?

[Bob Eager]

I believe (but don't know for certain as I don't use Windows much) that there's a commonly available 'fix' for the Windows mail. I expect someone else will jump in...it sounds genuinely useful.

[The Natural Philosopher]

So is the man on the clapham bus, but its pretty irrelevant to the dicscussion.

If anyone killfiles you for netiquette violations, you are privileged.

You simply wont have to deal with their issues. A definite plus IMHO.