The WORST Consumer Unit I've Ever Seen!

this is one of the worst consumer units i've ever seen we're here doing an eicr we're going to rip things to pieces today i'm going to take you on the ride with us and show you all the crazy things that we find hope you enjoy i almost forgot make sure you like and subscribe [Music] first things first with eicr's organization is key in order to be efficient and quick about doing them i'm gonna get my laptop set up here a little desk to work on all the tools and then we're ready to go so when we were here a couple of weeks ago we did neat or not neat on this consumer unit this is an absolute train wreck look at that they have mushed the cables in i was slightly shocked by this consumer unit but i want to get luke's reaction to it so we're going to get luke to take the board cover off and see what he thinks because you know second opinion is always good maybe i was just being a bit too negative about it [Music] oh my word that's like spaghetti junction how are you gonna identify where it goes what that's crazy i'm glad it wasn't just me you thought that how are you actually gonna identify where the cables were it's like how many cables can you mash into a tight space i mean i hope that's in some sort order so the first part of an eicr is always visual inspection so we check things like the bus bar teeth to make sure that they're correctly secured into the bottom of the breakers so luke's now checking actually the top of the board to make sure there are no holes that could have you know get your fingers in or have mice crawling in or anything like that we're trying to figure out what the bs number is of these mcbs and actually there isn't a bs number written on them which is quite unusual but because it's a type b i would assume that it's at 608.98 um if it was a type 2 then that would be a 3871 which they're no longer included in the regulations because this one as well this is a bit good amp that's a ten yeah unless i have six so that's a good one for you actually why do you think that is on a six ounce breaker but it's a ten mil cable what might have happened what's it labeled as on the on the board shower upstairs yeah so what do you think might have happened does it have the shower place it's not as high yeah exactly yeah so it probably would be it might have been like a seven or ten kilowatt shower the modern showers use a lot less on a 30 or 40 amp breaker and then they change it over to one that doesn't heat the water anymore it's just a pump yeah so they put on a six amp breaker now instead well drilling getting all these out the breakers it's going to be horrible it's going to be a fun ball change to do that because they're all quite neat where they come in at the top uh exactly [Music] can you tell us what's happening with that main incoming cable that's just stripped on earth twice yeah and what size do you reckon it is bigger than 10. yeah and what size fuse would you expect to be in it 100 amp no i mean how many amps can that 16 mil twin earth take do you reckon i'm not too sure i'm going to jump into you so if you're not sure how do you find out look in the bricks but so this is the lovely new brown on-site guide amendment 2 updated this is the latest one i'm going to give luke the challenge of finding out the current carrying capacity of 16mm twin and earth cable [Music] [Applause] so this is single core thermoplastic pvc or thermosetting yeah here we go inside and sheath flat capable yeah that's it so that is the one six ml 16 mil what factors can affect the rating of that cable grouping or the clipping whether it's clipped above the passwords in a firmware intersection works in hundred more thickness so it's the reference method yeah basically we need to figure out what is the reference method that they've used to install the cable and then we know based on that what the current carrying capacity is so it can vary from as high as 85 amps if it's clip direct all the way down to 42.5 yeah and that's just a volt drop 42.5 amps if it's installed in thermal insulation with the cable not touching the inner wall surface so that's a huge difference isn't it that's just half that half's the current count with this one obviously it goes up into the ceiling yeah what we've got to do really is trace the cable back to where it goes yeah and then see if we can figure out what the most suitable reference method is to apply to it that would play me ocd that would what see all the lights so it's got them all the same the last one is the other direction that driving saying that corner lights oh yeah that is annoying wow i can't believe you even noticed that though i probably wouldn't have noticed that this is the origin of the installation it's a little bit dark in here so we're going to try out these new head torches from unilite that they've just released super cool well they look cool anyway let's see if they're any good um i'll be kind to give you the brighter one so these are like proper proper head torches you knew like i've done hair torches in the past which have been good like you probably see john wearing his a lot on the videos it never leaves his head um but i've always liked these type of head torches that have the battery at the back because you've got a separate proper separate battery it's got like four different modes with warm white and cool white which is pretty good right so tell me what you see luke what size is the main cutout fuse are your eyes good enough no can you see that from there it's 80 amp okay 80 amp main cutout fuse yeah then from there what happens this goes into the henley block does it i know it goes straight into the meter sorry yeah then the meter into henry block yeah and that comes down and feeds this tiny board it's just a shower on it is that what it says yeah somebody's got an image of a shower right okay and a 50 amp then the other heavy block goes intact which i'm guessing the main icelander very old one and then from there got the twin nerf that goes up into the ceiling yeah so i when when i came out here originally i thought that old um isolator was not in use but it appears that it actually might be yeah so that would be interesting that handle is the main switch to turn the power on and off yeah and then there'll be a fuse inside probably yeah so what we need to find out is what is the bs number of that if there is one is it safe does it have a fuse in it if so what size is the fuse i thought we would probably need some slightly longer steps but there's not a lot we can do about that unfortunately so it's an old it's it's bill which um i think yeah so you can't open that there's a butterfly underneath hiding just like hibernating underneath there's a whole like family of insects living in here so there's a massive hole in the top of this consumer unit here so don't sh if if you're showing me standing on the top of the ladder no i'm gonna stand too late it's down here right bloopers there's a massive hole in the top of this consumer unit so that doesn't comply with um the regulation about the horizontal top surface of the consumer unit should be ip4x or ipxxb which basically means you shouldn't be able to poke a little bit of wire in there which we can that what's wrong with that luke that hole there it's rather large yeah grommets or anything exactly no grommet no gland you could tug on those and probably pull them out yeah and there is a butterfly resting underneath there as well so i very naughtily just stood too high on these steps um i got told off by luke and the cameraman which is good because people are not working safely you should call them out on it then we just had a discussion about this right on this step which is the second step up it says do not stand on or above this step you can lose your balance so that means that the highest we can go on this step ladder without breaking the rules is this i mean that is ridiculous so now if i do this oh i'm breaking the rules i mean i understand they've got to cover their backs but it does seem a little bit over the top maybe we just have to put that as a limitation because it's too high for us to reach safely [Music] this whole thing is so rickety and the twin and earth cable just goes in through the metal hole at the top no grommet or anything it is installed above this ceiling i don't feel any insulation so it's probably just clip direct along the joists in which case it's 85 amp rated but there might even be a 100 amp fuse in there so we do need to check that really we are safe to turn off the customer just had to finish some important work right so moment of truth boom power off and then this will flop down right so this is what's inside it's absolutely full of dust and junk it's on 45 amp fuses according to this you can see the hole in the top there uh it's pretty dodge underneath you can see all angles there oh my camera skills are so good you'll fit in my ladder here yes i'm gonna make sure i don't pull it out and then fall off okay i'm not not really gonna mess with those because they're actually the asbestos fuse carriers as we recently did our asbestos awareness course i don't want to mess with those this is another sort of little consumer unit which seems to do an electric shower so we'll have to do an rcd test on this and take down the details but i will just take a picture of it a faulty impedance test this is where you take the main earthen conductor out and then test from there to live supply down into the board and then you put it back in and you'll get pfc but perfect yeah great yeah [Music] 0.10 great so it's perspective short circuit current yeah instead of protect effective fault current yeah i mean obviously it's good today that's not asked for on the certificate is it you need to put the highest to basically test yeah you test both and then you put the highest reading between so which one was highest the the falcon what two two yeah okay how much that's two point zero four and the other one was two point one one i think all right okay i'm just gonna do global insulation resistance test just to see like if we go across all conductors basically what's the resistance very very much doubt if it'll be a good reading but it's worse to try zero yeah that's what i thought that one's pretty high that one's low high [Music] so cameraman just asked why don't we just wire a whole house in 10 mil to an enough cable and the answer i would love to know your thoughts in the comments but how me and luke answered it is number one 10 mil twin earth is very hard to work with because it's so stiff and thick number two 10 mil twin earth has much more copper in it so it's much more expensive so then we said well how much more expensive is it and we looked on the cef website and it's four pound 32 meter for 10 mil twin on earth versus 38 p a meter for one mil to an earth so you can see that actually 10 mil to an earth is more than 10 times the cost of one mil hence why we don't oversize cables if it's not necessary so we're going to do what's called a ring continuity test on a rigging circuit there are two conductors one going around one side one going around the other side and they meet in the middle or at least they should but sometimes that ring is broken so you need to check that it's continuous otherwise the circuits compromised essentially in the cables might end up getting over loaded so luke's going to take the conductors out the breakers and the earth terminal neutral terminal and we'll test between them the resistance to make sure there's a continuous loop and that that resistance is low enough for the kind of readings that we would normally require all twisted all the earths okay so you know do you know a way around that when you've got a mess of a consumer unit like that rather than trying to take out conductors and then it'd be really difficult to get them back in what was another way that we could do the ring continuity test from the socket yeah so let's do that yeah especially if they're twisted together at the board like that yeah you don't want to be trying to untwist them and twist them back together so while it's doing that i'm going around just trying to find out which sockets are dead so that we know which sockets are on this circuit and i do that using this device you can get various different brands of them but you just plug it in and it will beep if the socket is live so that socket is completely dead i'll turn off all the switch fuse connection units as well basically we disconnect all possible connective loads so that we don't get any interference from actual connected appliances when we do the installation test reading so when you've got appliances like this where do you how do you get to the sockets sometimes they're right behind so you have to pull the appliances out some electricians would put that as a limitation to say that we could not test the sockets for the washing machine because they were behind and we you know it's too heavy to lift it's not safe or whatever i mean for us we usually try and go the extra mile if we can rather than just making unnecessary limitations and actually in this case we've got the socket for them is just down the side here but i instantly see something really dodgy here so let me show you that so this is a washing machine and a dishwasher both off one single socket using this splitter plug together combined i should imagine that they take a lot more than 13 amps and this thing is probably only only rated at 13 amps anyway so it is probably a fire risk so this is 1 500 watts how do you know how many amps that is in terms of um how could you calculate what's into amps it's divided by 230 no yes yeah yeah that's great yeah so if we do seven just under seven six good bit of mental arithmetic there so we do 1 500 watts divided by 230 volts that gives us six and a half amps okay so this is not going to take that much power realistically let's look at the dishwasher and see how much that can take 2100 divided by 230 9.1 amps so 9.1 plus 6.5 you could potentially have 15.6 amps of power being drawn through that socket and therefore through this which i don't think is rated at 16 amps no it's not it says their maximum 13 amps on it so this could actually catch fire that is a fire hazard and we will note that on the report but we'll just advise the customer that really they need to get that change to double socket or plug one of these appliances into a different socket rather than using a splitter so as you can see we're just trying to get the end to ends on the socket circuits but a snaps look mess um it's hard enough trying to find the lives and the neutral legs but on the earth they've actually twisted the legs in the sleeve as well so obviously that makes it pretty much impossible to separate them through all this mess [Music] oh great no way damn you have definitely connected them back in properly at the board oh look at that breaking the live on the ring first one flipping it 4.63 how did you know that was going to happen i just knew it to be honest i knew that that would be breaking that's a bit weird 0.63 not 176. yeah i mean there might be a slightly loose connection on neutral so i've got myself one of these um i've seen a lot of sparky's loving these on doing eicrs just makes it super quick to take covers off but i've never tried it in real life yet i have done a video on it on tools to spark so head to the link up here or in the description below and you can see my full sort of unboxing and initial thoughts on it but i'm going to try it now right i mean that is so nice so quick oh apart from when the screws are a little bit threaded so when we're testing between the two live conductors here we should expect to get a low resistance reading we're getting a high resistance reading off the scale it should be more like this so on the neutrals we've got a reading of 0.6 ohms that's that's the kind of reading that we're looking for there's nothing which means that there is an inconsistent in continuous ring there's a break somewhere in the live conductors usually it's a live wire that's pulled out the back of a socket but sometimes it can be worse than that can be like a cable that's been cut through or something the only way to find it is to really go around socket by socket point by point and check to see if there's a wire that's loose or anything so we're going to do a few of those anyway because we've got to do 20 sampling we'll see if we can find it there if not we have to note it on the report but the reason it's not good is because only one side of the ring is taking all the power so if you've got 30 amps running on this circuit it's not going to trip the 32-ounce breaker but one single 2.5 twin earth cable is not rated at 30 amps it won't be able to take it so the cable could overheat melt cause a fire it's potentially quite dangerous so the consensus is this is a great tool and we'll leave a link in the description where you can get yourself one of these tool of the day we're just now putting these sockets on points all back in here in the kitchen because we can't find the fault the customer has said there's some sockets upstairs that are on this circuit as well though so we might check a few of those but the thing is we're not here to to repair faults we're here to just check everything when we do the quote for the remedials like consumer unit change and stuff we might put a few hours on the quote for us to actually find and repair this fault because if we just keep searching on this now it's going to be half a day gone and we'll only be on our first circuit still so i'm just going to put these covers back note it down on the report and then move on to the next circuit in the next tests oh you know that might tell us where the fault is actually makes this obviously still 3.9 i know as well i've just tried doing it well you suck it but i guess this socket maybe yeah you know what it could well be because you know what i'm saying about overload yeah if this socket has been yeah just plug it into one of the others and then i'll plug this in and wiggle this around and see if the reading you know that john's trick that he he shared yeah so this one's normal 0.76 no it's not changing no okay well we'll pull the washing machine out and we'll check this socket because i reckon you're right it's probably this one is the one that's the most awkward that's where the fault is yeah ah well the neutrals are pulled straight out so that's not good i mean the lives actually look okay bizarrely just love working in small cupboards just what i trained for really you know what that means that means the socket is dodgy because it's been overloaded probably you want to give me your tester again to plug in wow yeah which is even higher it's a really dodgy socket basically so it's just hello bless 5.75 so we'll note that down that this socket needs changing i mean you basically got essentially no earth there we can just take a picture of that reading actually because that's good to actually have as evidence on the report as well [Music] lovely secure socket held on by one screw max if you just hold those cables and i'll turn it on and see if it's live or not [Music] no i [Music] as well nice [Music] imagine if you brushed your head on that as you walked past or in the morning they'll wake you up [Music] now this really winds me up when people buy these appliances and they don't take the little cardboard thing off and it's because this can get all damp and then it can cause issues later on with the plug so if you're buying appliances always take that office is not meant to be kept on [Music] so guys i've got an exciting announcement for you we are hiring we are looking for two more fully qualified and experienced electricians to join the artisan team so if you are a great electrician who takes pride in their work if you're the kind of person who wants to do top-notch electrical work with great customer service and passion and work for a team who has that same passion then we would love to hear from you if you drop us an email to jobs at artisanelectrics.co.uk and we'll need two things from you we need a cv and a short video of yourself telling us about you what you do what your experience is if you can send that over in the next couple of months we're going to be reviewing all the cvs that come in and we're going to be arranging a group interview where we invite some of you along to meet the team and interview you and then we'll shortlist the best candidates for a one-to-one interview it's exciting times we're growing here at artisan and we love for some great sparkies to be part of the team and we are particularly looking for anyone who's got experience with solar and battery storage and commercial type installs especially on the ev side so if your expertise is in there we particularly love to hear from you you do have to be from our area though so we're looking for people who are from cambridge cambridge share surrounding areas not too far from cambridge because otherwise you're going to be doing a heck of a lot of travelling so i hope to hear from you guys soon so just to explain what's been happening here we've been searching everywhere because the insulation resistance reading is quite low we've unplugged everything we're like why is it so low what have we missed there's a usb socket here so what we'll do is we'll get luke to take the cover off and then actually disconnect that we'll do the test again and i bet it will be a clear clear reading then because the thing is with usb sockets they've got electronics so it's like you've got a connected connected device essentially and so as soon as we disconnect that i bet we'll have a clear reading the end to ends on that socket circuit have come back fine but when we've done the ir that we're coming out very very low as 0.01 so we've walked around we found that usb socket disconnected that but it still remain on the same reading so we're just going to have to note that down and obviously put in investigational report for that so uh checking the main earth bonding to the gas and water so you can see we've got main earth terminal up there from there it comes out and goes around here all the way along to the gas and it looks like yeah we've got a decent gas bond right within the where the pipe should come in they've looped through the gas bond there to go presumably off to the water that should be a continual piece of earth why they shouldn't have cut it they should have just looped it if they've cut it that's not really acceptable either it means probably only a c3 but should note it down if we follow this round now it goes along here and then down here and then yeah look so this is the main water pipe yeah it feels like an old lead an old lead pipe it is bonded there and it looks like there's some kind of dodgy junction box actually just hiding up there behind that pipe so we might need to check that so here's a nice junction box covered in spiders webs and it's one of the old screw-on lids they've actually twisted the earth together and then you've just got looks like permanent live neutral and switch live that could do with putting into a proper weatherproof junction box really and those earths are just twisted together they could do it's properly terminating so we'll take a picture of that and we'll put on the report [Music] this really bugs me they've clipped the earth cable with twin and earth clips so the clips are way too big for the cable they could just use the proper clips it's just lack of attention to detail and really bugged me so while i'm having a little bite of lunch i want to tell you about the new artisan discord which is a special place we've created to be like an online community where people can talk about electrics whether you're an electrician a trainee or diy enthusiast or you just enjoy our channel it's a community with over a thousand people already where you can chat about various subjects regarding electricity and i'm going to be on there regularly answering your questions kind of live once a week for an hour so if you want the chance to just sort of chat to me as well once a week then it's a great opportunity to just sign up for that free discord to join up it's really easy there's a link in the description where you can find out more this is such a mystery right this light is not on any of the lighting circuits the lights in there are on the lighting circuit the lights in there on the lighting circuit but this light does not turn off even when we've turned off all the lighting circuits and all the circuits we've not tested yet so it's either it's off one of the socket circuits we've already tested which might be a bit dodgy if it is but i can't see where that could be we're gonna have a look in the room above to see if there's any spurs or anything like that but it's a bit of a mystery is that 2010 no oh you're right yeah why did that pop no no oh that's it first one first one right that's the second one middle one oh second one okay that is weird because that does the sockets in here which includes this fridge oh did you leak yeah you know when you were doing the insulation resistance and stuff did you unplug this little fridge from down yeah yeah okay that's weird so that light is just somehow randomly coming off these sockets but we can't see any switch fuse connection unit or anything it's very mysterious all right okay so there is this is what we call a live switch so there's a permanent live in neutral that come in the neutrals are in a connector block permanent life comes in and then switch light goes out to the light so that means somewhere probably from up above i would imagine the there is a spur coming down to here from the socket circuit so i'm going to go up now see if there's anything up above where that might be coming from here in cupboard it's a mystery because i mean there could be something behind this wardrobe but there's no way i'm getting this wardrobe out so that is just gonna have to go down as limitation [Music] check that out oh my goodness that is absolutely melted this is quite common with showers to be honest where uh they take a heck of a lot of power it's either overloaded the wires or potentially there was a loose connection there and it's been arcing and creating too much heat but it's completely melted this connector block and the terminal there fortunately the wire is long enough that we can hopefully cut it back and re-terminate it but we would need a new 50 amp connector block there which i don't think i've got now it is a 7.8 to 8.5 kilowatt shower um it's on a 10 mil cable it's on a 50 amp breaker that's absolutely fine so i think it's purely a problem where there was a loose connection probably this is why we check stuff look you'd never know until that either caught fire or started really smelling really horrible fishy or you know sparking or whatever [Music] okay so we've got 0.1 that's that's fine for r1 and r2 but we are gonna need to basically just isolate this because it's not safe for you to recognize just loose terminal probably yeah with showers like that i wouldn't be surprised if there's a bit of a dodgy connection in the um switch as well there you go this is why we check this and look wow look at that that shower thing we can't really leave it like this because the customer can't have a shower without it so i'm gonna nip to demons just around the corner and see if they've got a shower pull switch and a 60 amp connector block then we can just repair it straight away and then that's done picked up the old sparky special not in here though i was a little bit disappointed but look who is good old mikey residual current loadout and mr bundy has made an appearance hiding away there on page 30. i will make it one day but i was in the nic eic magazine recently which i was quite subtly proud of anyway we've got connector blocks and we've got a shower pull switch and back box so get luke to swap that over and we should be good for our customer to have a shower tonight which he'll be pleased about i feel like you're about to mug me off here look at that you finally made it luke is this the book check page 30 30. are you now covering it can't believe i can't believe if you've made it to that professional electrician magazine what which one of them there's faye doesn't think bundy i thought it's you you look so similar is it him he's put a cap on you and uh you'd be nick bundy is that him that is who do you think's better looking mikey or nick bundy well you're asking me in a purely you know non male admiring a fellow males looks um in a non-sexual way i would say nick no no i'm not no they're both knowing they're both the same no i'm better think the only solution is just to be pretty brutal and cut cut the badness out basically why neutral oh my goodness it wasn't even you know what that's why they never even connected them in properly which is completely loose ah no way look at that so whoever installed this they just never tighten the connections up and that is why drives me mad this like how can how can people do such bad work whoever did this is just diy shameless scumbag no not a diy scumbag just a scumbag in general so that's done it's not perfect because i don't have any earth's leaving large enough to go over this but i've twisted it up just make it a bit tidier and then these are into these hundred nice these 60 amp connector blocks uh which just tuck in there nicely it's not perfect but it's good enough and safe enough for the customer to have a shower again at least there's the saucy evidence of incompetent electrical work shocking okay i've been using this all day today jordan's lent me it for the day um obviously you've had the power for most of the day doing it in icr and i'm very impressed with the batteries lasting all day it's been absolutely brilliant if you look in the link in the description there's a code there which give you 25 percent off for all unilite products so i hope you've enjoyed this video i think luke is doing really well so well done to luke and it's been fun to work with him really enjoyed today if you want to watch another eicr why not stay for the next video that pops up because we've got quite a lot of these and each time there's always something shocking or surprising that we come across so grab a cup of tea stay and watch the next video which is all about findings on another eicr and a rental property i think you'll enjoy that either way though thanks for watching make sure you like and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one [Music] you

Channel: Artisan Electrics

Views: 116,742

Keywords: artisan electrics, electrician life, consumer unit, dodgy electrician, EICR, electrical fire, spaghetti junction, mess, nightmare, poor work, electrician, sparky, artisan electrics van, consumer unit wiring uk, consumer unit change, consumer unit wiring, eicr report explained, eicr testing, eicr report, eicr certificate, eicr insulation resistance test, electrician tools, electrician work, electrician basics, poor work ethic, poor worker, make it right

Id: N4Xn16mN4pM

Length: 34min 40sec (2080 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 21 2022