OV9

I'm still working trying to decorate my new home office (front bedroom). It's more than just remove carpet and strip wallpaper then carpet and paint, because the previous owners have made a right hash of the wiring. Issues so far:

1. The lounge (beneath this bedroom) had no ceiling light. They'd lifted the floor in the bedroom in 3 places to run the wire to the opposite wall, then down, so they had 2 sockets in the lounge walls into which they plugged lamps. Of course, they didn't secure the flooring they had lifted properly and I've had to spend hours reinforcing the 3 holes to take a proper load.
2. They had fitted a new power point in the wall. However, rather than lifting the floor and tapping into the ring main, they're run the wire just behind the plasterboard to the nearest other power point. This in itself is fine, but when they came to each batten, rather than creating an access point and drilling sideways through it, they'd just chiselled a bit out of the plaster board, 'looped' the cable in front of the batten, then fillered straight over the cable.
3. Somewhere in the house they've messed with both upstairs and downstairs ring mains. That is - you have to switch off both upper and lower ring mains at the fuse box to isolate the power, because they seem to be connected to each other somehow.
4. Add in random phone cables going everywhere and aerial cables sprouting in weird places and the whole thing is a mess. Not a terribly old house either - first built in 1990 and it's only had 2 owners before me.

Why can't people either a) leave well alone or b) do a job properly?

Most people don't have a concept of doing things properly. It either works or doesn't and if it works, it's good enough. These people probably buy Vauxhalls.

Worst I’ve come across was when we found a live cable in the wall of my old kitchen that came randomly from an upstairs circuit just plastered in with its live ends just open. We’d turned off all the kitchen power so we’re merrily drilling into walls. My brother found it whilst chasing out a new socket location and my dad confirmed it was live with a wood handles chisel... BANG!

Rich B wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 6:34 am Worst I’ve come across was when we found a live cable in the wall of my old kitchen that came randomly from an upstairs circuit just plastered in with its live ends just open. We’d turned off all the kitchen power so we’re merrily drilling into walls. My brother found it whilst chasing out a new socket location and my dad confirmed it was live with a wood handles chisel... BANG!

My fusebox has 2 switches for the light circuits, 1 labelled “upstairs” and the other labelled “downstairs”. “Upstairs” is actually everything on the left side of the house (kitchen/dining room/garage/utility/bedroom 2/bedroom 4), “downstairs” is the right side of the house (living room/hall/study/downstairs bog/landing/bathroom/bedroom 1/en suite/bedroom 3). That was fun to discover.

NotoriousREV wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 8:49 am My fusebox has 2 switches for the light circuits, 1 labelled “upstairs” and the other labelled “downstairs”. “Upstairs” is actually everything on the left side of the house (kitchen/dining room/garage/utility/bedroom 2/bedroom 4), “downstairs” is the right side of the house (living room/hall/study/downstairs bog/landing/bathroom/bedroom 1/en suite/bedroom 3). That was fun to discover.

Have you changed the labels?

DeskJockey wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 9:01 am

NotoriousREV wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 8:49 am My fusebox has 2 switches for the light circuits, 1 labelled “upstairs” and the other labelled “downstairs”. “Upstairs” is actually everything on the left side of the house (kitchen/dining room/garage/utility/bedroom 2/bedroom 4), “downstairs” is the right side of the house (living room/hall/study/downstairs bog/landing/bathroom/bedroom 1/en suite/bedroom 3). That was fun to discover.

Have you changed the labels?

Why would I do that?! Crazy talk.

NotoriousREV wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 9:04 am

DeskJockey wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 9:01 am

NotoriousREV wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2019 8:49 am My fusebox has 2 switches for the light circuits, 1 labelled “upstairs” and the other labelled “downstairs”. “Upstairs” is actually everything on the left side of the house (kitchen/dining room/garage/utility/bedroom 2/bedroom 4), “downstairs” is the right side of the house (living room/hall/study/downstairs bog/landing/bathroom/bedroom 1/en suite/bedroom 3). That was fun to discover.

Have you changed the labels?

Why would I do that?! Crazy talk.

Just checking. Can't have these outbreaks of common sense uncontrolled.

When we moved into this house there was a bakerlite on and off switch in the garage. That was it, no fuse box.

The light fittings were metal and had no earths.

We have the upstairs and downstairs things on our board.

Needed to change the lounge light fitting, switched off the downstairs switch, cracked both light switches in the lounge to make sure the light wasn't working. Went in and started changing the fitting and couldn't work out why things kept feeling a bit tingly, then got a nasty electric fence style shock and decided something was definitely a little off.

Turned off the upstairs light switch too and everything was fine.

When we bought the house in Macclesfield I had the "upgrades" inspected before agreeing on purchase price. Dining room lighting piggy backed off the lounge light, an entire socket that wasn't even wired in and a live wire hanging out of an unfinished wall switch. £900 Inc a new RCD, which came off the offer price. The sparky wasn't shocked but he was quite mad at the incompetence normal people display with electrics.

How about the downstairs lighting wired into a kitchen light switch (2 actual switches) as per normal but also in the same switch the ring main connected from a 3 pin plug under the fridge too for the undercupboard lights! That was fun replacing that I tell you!

My mums house had a shelf on the back of the wall where the kitchen light switch that did the under cabinet lights was. They did some refurb and the shelf was coming out, one of them turned the light switch on when the other was unscrewing it and they got a bit of a buzz.

Turned out one of the screws went straight into the switch wiring and when the light was turned on the metal bracket to the shelf was all live...