Home ownership

[Seeker]

Home ownership and the joys of discovering your house was previously owned by a bodger.

I inherited my current house from my parents, my Dad was a meticulous, conscientious worker who wouldn't allow bodges at work or home. This leaves the culprit to be the house's first owner who we will call Mr. R.

Mr R liked electrical chocolate blocks, if you're unfamiliar this is one:
https://www.difvan.com/chocolate-block-electrical/

I should point out that Mr R (or one of his minions) has broken the ring main of the property so it's no longer a loop.

As your travels in the property lead you into the attics (it's a dormer, so I have a front and back attic) like buried treasure these chocolate blocks emerge from under the insulation, easily recognisable by their feet of black insulating tape wrapped around them. I have found 5 so far.
The best one supplied garage power - a chocolate block supplied the feed and then a cable ran over the length of the hall and kitchen (30 feet), emerged outside the house, crossed a path into the garage (another 15 feet) where it fed two outlets and the lights. It wasn't possible to isolate the garage power. Why didn't he bodge it from the kitchen which would have made for a much smaller cable run? Who knows? I have had it replaced with an armoured cable connected to a separate circuit breaker in the house with another circuit breaker inside the garage.

This brings us to the latest find:

I'm stripping wallpaper and I find a lump, partially buried into the wall with plaster/polyfilla, it is obscured by the edge of the fitted wardrobes. On close examination my heart sinks, the lump, which is black, is insulating tape. Once more of the wallpaper has been removed the trail of the wiring can be followed to the lump: it is chocolate block #6.

I'm guessing that he ran a cable for a socket or a light and then Mrs R decided she wanted fitted wardrobes. No problem he said and fitted a chocolate block to terminate the cable, partially burying it in the wall (why partially? Another 5 mins work and it could have been buried competely). To compound the bodge (I mean, why stop there?), he ran another cable inside the fitted wardrobes, which dives into the wall and reappears at a socket, presumably to replace the one that was partially buried by the wardrobe. Naturally the hole he carved for the socket is far too large but nothing that the some Polyfilla and wallpaper won't almost cover. Good grief.

Options? I don't know if it's a live cable so I ought to try and dig it out, remove the feet of tape (based on previous finds) and check. It also means that somewhere, at the other end of the cable, will be chocolate block #7. The problem is that the wardrobe covers it, or part of it, making access tricky. Attic access over that part of room is also difficult because of Mr R's other workmanship (see below).
The only other option would be to plaster over it and make a smoother lump than is currently there, but then I would be a bodger, too. I'll sleep on it.

Mr R was a pipefitter by trade - I have had to have my central heating repiped because when he installed it he didn't lag the (in floor) pipes properly and they rotted. The c/heating pipes in the attic look a bit like an M. C. Escher drawing, at times climbing a couple of feet for unknown reasons (other than making it difficult to navigate the attic space) and with valves of unknown purpose daring you to turn them off. When the heating was repiped the heating engineer and I agreed not to mention them again after his questioning their purpose.


Edit - it kept nagging at the back of my mind so I dug it out. It is live.

[Kenzie]

Sounds like our place. When we had the tank removed from the airing cupboard we found that the loft conversion (lights and sockets as well as a hallway socket) had been spurred off the immersion heater circuit. Dreading to know what bodge we will find next.

Sent from my F5321 using Tapatalk

[Bibio]

chock blocks are a fire waiting to happen. the screws work harden over time then arc out. most of the time they throw the consumer unit rcd and then its a case of getting a spark in to trace and sort the problem.

could be worse you could have a house built in the 50's where none of the walls are secured properly :mad: its taken me since june to strip out and sort then insulate everything upstairs.. almost done now though and just waiting on plasterer. then its bathroom time [-o<

[Bibio]

btw i use these https://www.screwfix.com/p/wago-773-series-24a-2-way-push-wire-connector-100-pack/77102 in place of chock blocks.

[Seeker]

btw i use these https://www.screwfix.com/p/wago-773-series-24a-2-way-push-wire-connector-100-pack/77102 in place of chock blocks.

I'll give them a try.

[EssEllTwo]

btw i use these https://www.screwfix.com/p/wago-773-series-24a-2-way-push-wire-connector-100-pack/77102 in place of chock blocks.


Wagos are the way to go! I've used proper junction boxes in the past but recently discovered the Wago connectors and they make life so much simpler. They also have neat boxes to house the connections in. I mainly use the lever version (221), but have used the lighting ones recently for an outdoor light.

[Bibio]

wagos are just superb. i use them for securing bare wire ends while taking down plasterboard and such like. also afterwords i use a short length of twin and earth on the light fitting then just plug it in instead of messing about with pendant screw terminals at the top of a ladder.

to get wagos off you must twist and pull.

[EssEllTwo]

That's exactly how I discovered them - my g/f's daughter was have her house redone, an electrician who was in doing sunken ceiling lights in the front room took the striplight down from the kitchen so the ceiling could be skimmed. He terminated the bare wires for it with the Wagos so when both him and the plaster vanished and she was left with no lighting in the kitchen, I fitted her a new light and took the Wagos away for investigation.



The 221 series just need the lever flipping up, no twisting required.

[Seeker]

Chocolate block in wall postscript:

My updated plan was to cut the cable in the attic, separate the wires and heatshrink it (wago's haven't arrived yet), put an identifier on it to mark one end as live and the other inert/dead. I just assumed it was the ring main (or what is left of it) but as I was dropping off to sleep I thought: "what if it's on the lighting circuit?" It did seem an odd place to put a socket.

Good thing I checked because it was...

[embee]

You come across some nightmare stuff sometimes. Lead sheathed cable is a horror.
When I moved into my house many moons ago it was on rubber cable. The tails to the C/U had perished and there was a good inch of bare conductor showing where it entered the "fuse box".

I recently did a small outside job for someone in a very old tiny cottage in the country. There was an ancient (square pin at least but a round threaded lid ) outside socket for me to plug a chop saw into. On start up it tripped the circuit. Investigating it turned out to be on a lighting circuit with a 6A plug-in MCB (replacing a wire fuse) but the MCB was very tatty and the lever hadn't actually shifted even though the breaker had operated. Turned off and back on again and the circuit was live again (lights). Had to run an extension lead (with RCD!) from a kitchen socket.
I did my little job and beat a hasty retreat.

[Ruffy]

... but the MCB was very tatty and the lever hadn't actually shifted even though the breaker had operated. ...
Clearly this was a poor condition example but circuit breakers are actually designed that way, so that the tripping mechanism can't be simply overridden by fixing or holding the lever in the ON position.