How to install wiring outdoors? -There should be reliable protection against water hiting to metal parts (which are under voltage). To do this, the cable should placed inside conduit, connections should be placed inside IP65 or higher junction box and joining between conduit and junction box should be hermetically closed by nuts with rubber ring. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I could strangle them but obviously wouldn’t. Who are they? They are the invisible ones that from time to time make things difficult for me. Now you are wondering just what I am talking about, well I am talking about my work but specifically those who have gone before me. You might call them fellow workers or colleagues had they been working with me but no, they are the ones who let the side down because of their shoddy workmanship, never thinking that someone in the future might be faced with difficulties due to their work. I remember vividly one of the first things that was driven into us as novices to the trade, we were told by our instructor to ‘always leave plenty of slack’. He was of course referring to the length of circuit conductors we should have behind switches and power outlets and any other electrical equipment. If there is a problem with any fixture and it has to be replaced then replacing it becomes less of a problem when there is plenty of spare length on the conductors. Simple common sense. Look at the poor example in the picture above. Those two sets of conductors should be much longer. If a switch had to be fitted to them they wouldn’t be long enough! The number of times I have had to extend such conductors when replacing faulty equipment or simply fitting new ones is beyond belief. I had a job to do on Thursday morning and it was to install an extra power point in a bedroom. Without going into detail I discovered that whoever had wired the house power points had left a coil of connected wiring beneath the floorboards obviously to supply a new point sometime in the future but they had not gotten round to do that for one reason or another. It made my task that little bit easier as I didn’t have to install and connect any new wiring. All I had to do was to use the existing coil to supply the new point and there was plenty of cable in the coil to do it, so much so that I had to cut some off. The lady had come into the room with a cup of coffee for me and she noticed what I was doing. I told her that it wasn’t often that someone leaves plenty of wiring for future use but also mentioned that it is worse when little has been left behind a switch making replacement difficult and sometimes impossible. Anyway I soon had her new power point installed and working and as I was finishing I got a call from a guy who asked if I could refit three power points and a lighting switch all of which had been removed during redecoration. The house was almost en-route to my house and only a mile away so I accepted the work and called there thirty minutes later. It turned out that the guy had been working there himself as a painter and decorator and wasn’t the owner of the house. The owner was out of the country and having the work done in his absence. I asked the guy why he had disconnected and removed the fittings as most would have decorated around them by simply loosening the fixing screws. He mumbled something about it being easier to decorate with them removed. I kept my thoughts on that one to myself. So I got down to the job and discovered to my horror that the conductors in the power outlet boxes were extremely short and it took me quite some time to eventually get them all back and connected. The lighting switch conductors were much longer so no problem there. I was cursing the electrician who hadn’t the sense to leave enough slack in the boxes when he had originally installed them. I wonder if he will be presented with a similar problem one day and what will his reaction be if he is? Had the house been my own I would have moved the outlets further up the wall to gain some extra length whilst at the same time replacing the single outlets with twin ones but of course the house wasn’t mine and it had just been redecorated! Finally I was on my way home and on reaching there found that someone had left a message on the house phone. It was a lady in whose apartment I had worked some weeks ago and she wanted a special pull switch fitting as hers was faulty. I was supposed to do the job on my last visit but she hadn’t purchased the switch. It was the sort of switch that could only be purchased in a retail outlet or on-line as electrical suppliers don’t usually stock them. Anyhow instead of calling me on my mobile phone when I could have gone straight there from my other jobs she called the house phone. That meant I had to leave the house after only just getting there. Some people just do not think. I went along to do the ten-minute job but discovered it took me much longer as, you might have guessed, the conductors were barely long enough!
Shirley Anne
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Filed under: Electrical Tagged: Electrical, Workmanship
