a view through my own eyes

So ignoring the electricity issues in the house, it has just been a week of one thing after another.

1. the aircon started faffing around in one of the server rooms at work, disabling the management and monitoring interface means that the aircon works but for the moment we cannot monitor it.

2. a PSU went awol in our old not-quite-SAN, so a colleague reset it not realising that the student email resides on it these days. Not a major issue, just irritating at the time.

3. the aircon went wobbly in the one of the other machine rooms at work, a colleague sent over there commented that he could cook in his underwear. The aircon engineers came out and I think bodged it with gaffer tape and an elastic band for the moment, parts have been ordered. In the meantime as much stuff as possible has been shut down over there.

4. Late friday afternoon a library server reported two degraded disks with impending failures, and the management software in an odd state. So Saturday morning was spent sorting out the management software and swapping one of the disks. Fortunately (!) one of the disks finally failed on Friday night so my concern about which disk to swap first was taken out of my hands. Sunday saw the second disk being swapped and the array being resynced. Monday saw the rebuild complete but one of the new disks in degraded state. Tuesday will see me back on the phone to Dell.

5. Saturday our broadband connection died, handily not us or our kit were at fault. The authentication server at the ISP appeared to have gone on annual leave. This was most helpful in keeping an eye on no 4. (above).

6. Sunday we had a power cut. A real one this time. Lots of blips at around 8pm which lead to groans of ‘oh poo not again’ followed by ‘but the RCD hasn’t tripped so not our fault!’, 9pm ish saw the power go completely. Allegedly a tree had a coming together with an overhead power line. By morning our village was supposedly being powered by a generator somewhere and EDF could not say when things would be really fixed. This helped no end with no 5. and no 4. (above).

7. Monday (today) we were due to have my Nan here for lunch (not to eat, to feed – honest). However due to 6. (above) cooking a leg of lamb in an electric oven looked like it would be a gamble. So calling my Nan, we took the lamb, spuds, veg, pudding and all needed pots and pans down to her house and cooked on gas!

Yes I still live. To be honest I have had absolutely nothing to say, which to be fair sums up most of this blog. Anyhow a couple of books have been read – no way now that I will manage a book a week as planned. Oh well. reviews coming soon – honest.

In the meantime there has been a modicum of excitement.

Just over a week ago we come home from work and there is a distinct lack of power to the sockets in the house. A trip upstairs to where the consumer unit (fuse box) is flush mounted inside a fitted wardrobe (why there of all places?) and note that the RCD switch that controls the socket rings has tripped.

Odd.

Flip the RCD and five minutes later, bzzt click and the RCD trips. But at least the circuits not on the RCD (2 x cooker, smoke alarm, immersion and 2x lights) are fine.

At this point I should point out that our CU has a distinct lack of labels and just a scrap of paper inside with illegible writing on. So shutting down all of the ring circuits, enabling the RCD and bringing one circuit up at a time eventually lead to me working out which switch related to which ring and writing it down (kitchen, upstairs, downstairs and garage).

During this process was the occasional: bzzt click etc.

At this point I go around the entire house unplugging absolutely everything, and then repeat the entire process of enabling the rings one by one and allowing ten minutes between each one to allow the RCD to trip.

Eventually I suss out that the upstairs ring is causing the RCD to trip. At this point I resign myself to an evening of removing every switch and checking the wiring in the hope of finding something obvious.

Since the fuse box is located in the corner of the room that is full of my shitmy study, it is the obvious place to start. So plugging everything back in, I enable the ring and then go round turning off all of the switches one by one. The first switch is around 2 foot from the CU, I turn it off, interestingly the item plugged into it stays on. Odd, most odd. So I turn it on – nothing happens, and then back off – nothing happens.

Halleluja!

For a laugh I plug a lamp into the second socket to note that it neither works when on or off, in the first it works when the socket is on or off.

Marvellous.

At this point it is getting late and to be fair I am tired and hungry. I unplug the stuff on the switch and leave it, in the hope it will live until morning.

Saturday I buy a new switch, fit it and out of amusement rip the old one to pieces. Inside I find that a spring behind the switch had flipped out, which lead to a contact slipping inside and providing a short.

So folks the less here is don’t get the house wired by an electrician who uses the cheapest nastiest switches, sockets etc.

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Thursday morning there is a repeat performance – this gets narrowed down fairly quickly to a cordless jug kettle having a leak and soaking the contacts in the base.

At this point I am starting to contemplate what other electrical wonders in the house await me.

On mrspao’s suggestion I email a friend who just rewired his own house himself and then had it PratPart P certified, so I hope has a vague idea of what to do. A day or so later, I have seen my friend, received lots of advice, a cop of the IEE testing guide and several bits of test equipment to check each socket, take impedance readings back to earth and do a continuity test of the rings amongst other things.

So over the next couple of weeks I will be going round the house replacing every single switch, socket etc with good quality Crabtree or MK (but not from B&Q as they are the nasty East Asian import versions) components and then testing along the way.

Thankfully this stuff I can do myself legally without needing to spend a fortune on an electrician and can ensure that non cheap parts are used.