Gallery

Project: Big Beasts Company.

I was approached by Matt, the mechanical engineer at Big Beasts company who required a new workshop wiring. This included the supply and install of a new 3 phase Distribution board, sockets, lights, and several 3 and 5 pin outlets for his welders, grinders and cutters.

New three phase board

Energise!

Circuits tested, distrubution board on ready for the live tests

Board mid test

Testing of all of the circuits prior to energising board

"Behind the scenes"

Cabling up for the workbench was all done from the store cupboard behind.

Board completed

Testing

Pictured is joe my labourer lending a hand with the testing

Project: Welshpool Livestock Market Solar PV Installation.

I worked on this project as a sub-contractor to PAV Electrical Contractors trading from Llanfyllin ( www.pavelectrical.com ) We were asked to install a new 3 phase distribution board to feed three 3 phase invertors, each running four strings of PV panels. All totalled there were 180 (ish) panels to form a 50KVA system.

Main Breaker

This is the breaker which runs it all. Its the size of my fist.

Cable runs

DC cabling coming down off the roof in PVC cable tray installed for us by Richard Taylor Carpenrty, who else to cut a perfect bend! (www.richardtaylorcarpentry.co.uk)

Main Generation meter and isolator

DC isolators

Imran Nazar (Pav) of PAV making a start on the DC isolators

New Three Phase distribution board

Used to run the whole PV system

Three phase invertors

Each of these invertors runs four strings of PV panels. They weighed about 65kilos each........

Solar PV Panels

Installed by Stuart the builder on behalf of ZeroC in Welshpool

Generation

This is the readout about ten minutes after we powered the whole system up

Fault finding and rectification.

A large part of any sparks job is test and inspection. By going through this process we can find out a whole manor of problems from really simple ones which are easy to fix, to more major faults which could be potentially very dangerous. Sometimes the attitude of " It's worked for years, why change it now" just doesn't compute when you see some of the things we come across every day. Take a look at some of these and see if i can convince you:

After completing a fuseboard upgrade, the following test and inspection found this junction box on a wall outside, dripping with water. Not a good mix.

I come across this quite often. The shoer pull switch has been changed by the homeowner or tennant and in this case both of the neytral terminals have not been tightened correctly causing this bad overheating.

We had no earth on a lighting circuit so during investigation we found this (and a lot more) in little nooks and crannies about the property. If you happened to put your hand under here and touch this, i imagine it would hurt a bit. Again, live to 230v.

A non-working downlight revealed this. Slightly over heated methinks. Luckily we caught this before it became more serious.

Found this during a route T+I for a landlord. This was feeding the cellar lights and is live to 230v and was just dangling inside the cellar door. Not nice to put your hand on looking for the switch in the dark, especially as the earths have been chopped too.

This fine mess was brought to us by a lad who tried adding a socket for a loft light. Unfortunately he tried to cut into a 2 way light cable which has no neutral. He made his excuses when it wouldn't work, charged the customer and left it in this dangerous state. Very naughty.

I was called out to a tumble dryer which had started sparking and had tripped the power off. After a little investigation i found this loose cable loom rubbing against the spinning drum.

Another example of a poorly terminated neutral on a shower circuit. Here you can clearly see the melted plastic by the terminals and the damage caused to the conductor and the insulation on the cable.

During a test and inspection we found a fault which was a break in a cable in a socket circuit. It was narrowed down to this which we found in a childs bedroom. Someone putting up a curtain rail had drilled through one of the 'ring' cables. As the socket still worked via the other one, the workman simply plugged it with a plastic plug and drove a nail through it all and simply left it. Shocking.

This was a lovely little nest. I didn't take the before photo but this is it after i had tidied it all up and earthed it. Joy.

The gate post lights didn't work at this property and the switch was taped. We found this when we opened it up. When you switch the switch the live shorts directly to neutral. BOOM! Simply remedied though happily.

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