More trouble in my parent's kitchen refit.
We have just been screwing in a face plate for a newly fitted socket that has the switch and fuse for the power for the hob extractor fan. Our electrician had left it loose for decorating purposes. My girlfriend started to screw it in, complained that the face plate did not seem to quite fit, and then the socket blew up fairly spectacularly with a blue flash and persistent smoke emerging from the socket. The blast tripped out newly fitted consumer unit, which is split in to two banks of four. The first bank and the 3 switch on that bank (marked kitchen sockets) had been tripped.
We opened up the socket and found that the screws were too long, and one of them had gone straight through the shielding of the live wire to the core.
I reasoned that as the wire was damaged, and as we could not put the face plate back onto the socket, the only option was to leave the kitchen tripped off, and wait for the morning. But then my girlfriend started to moan that would mean that the boiler would be off and that the freezer would defrost (we do have access to another freezer and a small fridge to temporarily store these things) and the boiler would not come on (we do also have an immersion heater on the cylinder and various electric heaters). She argued that was too much of an inconvenience and we should switch the circuit back on.
We argued about this for a while, then in the end I decided to go and wake my Dad up, as it was his house after all, hoping he would act sanely. Unfortunately, he started poking around in the plug, said he could see the bare part of the cable, pushed the wires around a bit, and then argued that he had moved the wires out of harms way well enough for until the electrician comes, and switched the circuit on again. So now we have a exposed live frayed wire hanging out of the socket with a dangling faceplate.
As far as I am concerned this is completely insane. I was trying to argue that there may be a frayed earth in there too, as the wires were bunched up, and the live wire may cross the earth and risk making the radiators and other appliances live (I did notice some blackening on the earth wire). I tried to argue that the none of us know what has actually happened, and that for the sake of the minor inconvenience in the morning he was taking a crazy risk, but that made no different.
So right now I am sitting up in the room next to the kitchen, where I shall be all night, trying to keep awake in the event of a fire breaking out, or someone wandering in there and poking their fingers in, or maybe just brushing against it or one of the other sockets. I think I should probably just switch the circuit off anyway and say that it must have tripped again during the night, but I expect they will not accept that.
Anyway, any guidance on the immediate problem?
We have just been screwing in a face plate for a newly fitted socket that has the switch and fuse for the power for the hob extractor fan. Our electrician had left it loose for decorating purposes. My girlfriend started to screw it in, complained that the face plate did not seem to quite fit, and then the socket blew up fairly spectacularly with a blue flash and persistent smoke emerging from the socket. The blast tripped out newly fitted consumer unit, which is split in to two banks of four. The first bank and the 3 switch on that bank (marked kitchen sockets) had been tripped.
We opened up the socket and found that the screws were too long, and one of them had gone straight through the shielding of the live wire to the core.
I reasoned that as the wire was damaged, and as we could not put the face plate back onto the socket, the only option was to leave the kitchen tripped off, and wait for the morning. But then my girlfriend started to moan that would mean that the boiler would be off and that the freezer would defrost (we do have access to another freezer and a small fridge to temporarily store these things) and the boiler would not come on (we do also have an immersion heater on the cylinder and various electric heaters). She argued that was too much of an inconvenience and we should switch the circuit back on.
We argued about this for a while, then in the end I decided to go and wake my Dad up, as it was his house after all, hoping he would act sanely. Unfortunately, he started poking around in the plug, said he could see the bare part of the cable, pushed the wires around a bit, and then argued that he had moved the wires out of harms way well enough for until the electrician comes, and switched the circuit on again. So now we have a exposed live frayed wire hanging out of the socket with a dangling faceplate.
As far as I am concerned this is completely insane. I was trying to argue that there may be a frayed earth in there too, as the wires were bunched up, and the live wire may cross the earth and risk making the radiators and other appliances live (I did notice some blackening on the earth wire). I tried to argue that the none of us know what has actually happened, and that for the sake of the minor inconvenience in the morning he was taking a crazy risk, but that made no different.
So right now I am sitting up in the room next to the kitchen, where I shall be all night, trying to keep awake in the event of a fire breaking out, or someone wandering in there and poking their fingers in, or maybe just brushing against it or one of the other sockets. I think I should probably just switch the circuit off anyway and say that it must have tripped again during the night, but I expect they will not accept that.
Anyway, any guidance on the immediate problem?
). He could also have temporarily wrapped a piece of insulation tape around the damaged wire before turning it back on, if you have some. Hope you're not still up worrying about it.
