Novel House Wiring Scheme

[roberta1000]

Called into a neighbour's house because there was a 'funny smell' coming from the old-style fusebox. Opened it up to find that the immersion heater fuseholder had a stripped screw and the wire had been folded double and jammed in with a nail which had come a bit slack.....

While I was there the neighbour asked me what would be involved in running an extension out to his shed. It was a small bungalow so I popped up to the attic for a look. The wiring from the fusebox had been neatly done, ran straight down the middle of the roofspace branching off here and there, but what was this large black box??

I opened it up to find that every wire had been cut across and all of the red ones joined into a large terminal strip, same for all of the black ones and all of the earth ones - lighting, power, cooker, the lot!!! Apparently some previous owner had decided that this made things simpler when he wanted to connect up the odd new light or socket.

Turned into a modest couple of days' work to sort it all out.

 

[ColJack]

individually or all in one block?

if it's individual then the bungalow may be one of those 2 part houses you see on the back of lorries.. like portakabin..

they wire each half and join under the floor or in the loft space..

it would be preferable to do it on din rail terminals but there's no regs against it and it is a common practice way of extending circuits when moving a consumer unit..

 

[roberta1000]

A bit more interesting than that. The 2 lighting circuits, 2 power circuits, cooker and immersion were all tied together in parallel so in effect there was a single large circuit supplied by about 150A worth of fuses (also in parallel). As I said - novel!!