i am working at a m8's house he has bought to renovate. he rang me this morning to say he wasn't going to be there until about 9.30am because he had to take the kids to school.
after waiting at the house until 10.30 i rang him to find out what was happening. then he explained he had driven round a corner (blind bend) on a country road, to be faced with a badly flooded road. i know this road and it has a very bad sudden drop in it like a small bowl. apparently, before he could stop he was straight in the middle of it. the car cutout instantly and purred steam everywhere. his car is an expensive Alpha Romeo and he had to get it towed out and to a garage.
to my surprise and his dismay, he explained it had literally split the engine block and the garage said about £4k's worth of damage.
being fully comp on his insurance should have proved a life saver but when he rang them, they told him that rainwater is a natural force of nature and therefore not covered on his insurance.
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then my aunty rang me saying she has lost all of her sockets and couldn't get the trip to go back on.
i advised her to unplug everything etc etc and try. that in 99.9% of cases provides the answer to the fault but not this time, so i went round.
she explained that she had just had a new central heating fitted and that the trip had gone off yesterday when they were putting the floorboards back down.
i tested the circuit. there is only one ring-main in the whole of this house and it dates from around 1970, so i knew i could be there for ages finding other age related problems
the most logical 1st course of action was to check the recently laid floorboards that coincided with the trip going off yesterday.
i removed all of the carpets and lifted all the boards again...nothing at all.
started to systematically remove the socket front 1 by 1 parting the cables and testing each one as i went along.
finally 6 hours later i found the suspect cable downstairs under the floor...... it had a Joint box on it and it was under 8" of water
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finally after a pretty annoying day, 7.30pm i finally arrived home to find i couldn't get to my drive. the next door neighbors tree had snapped in the wind and blocked the private road. i had to spend the next 2 hours chopping it to move it.
