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A friend of mine asked me to have a look at the outside lights and socket in his garden, that run from his brick built shed. He's recently bought the house. This was the mess inside the junction box, although I had removed a couple of choc blocks already.

Whoever installed it use random combinations of the colours. The red cable on the bottom right is the (isolated) line from the house, light blue is neutral and the unsleeved cable is earth. However, the socket to the left of it (slightly out of pic) was wired yellow to live, blue to neutral, unsleeved to earth, as was the garden socket! The two lights had red for live, blue for neutral.

The two cables going down went outside to socket and one light, both buried under the patio, but were shorting across the blue and unsleeved, so they were disconnected and cut back. One the cable going up went to a light onthe wall of the shed, which was also shorting and was removed completely. I rewired the socket with the correct cable and sleeved up the rest to the correct colours.

To cap it all, this was connected to the upstairs lighting circuit inside the house!

Sloppy and untidy but all too common - the simple use of proper coloured sleeves would have been enough to allow it to pass first muster but, then again, we know that jobs like that are done 'down' to a price and never 'up' to an acceptable standard.

I've seen worse - a LOT worse.

No excuse ever for not sleeving the Earths in a metal enclosure though...

Looks like fp200 cable, normally used for fire alarms. Notice they haven't got a earth connection to the back of that metal box as well.

There's wasn't a Earth terminal in the box, oddly enough. I put a crimped ring and fly lead on one of the mounting screws and put a fly lead on the socket box which did have one. But I didn't do any other work as I couldn't verify how good or bad the earth to the CCU was and didn't want to add anything to it.

Stooby2 wrote:A friend of mine asked me to have a look at the outside lights and socket in his garden, that run from his brick built shed. He's recently bought the house. This was the mess inside the junction box, although I had removed a couple of choc blocks already.

Whoever installed it use random combinations of the colours. The red cable on the bottom right is the (isolated) line from the house, light blue is neutral and the unsleeved cable is earth. However, the socket to the left of it (slightly out of pic) was wired yellow to live, blue to neutral, unsleeved to earth, as was the garden socket! The two lights had red for live, blue for neutral.

The two cables going down went outside to socket and one light, both buried under the patio, but were shorting across the blue and unsleeved, so they were disconnected and cut back. One the cable going up went to a light onthe wall of the shed, which was also shorting and was removed completely. I rewired the socket with the correct cable and sleeved up the rest to the correct colours.

To cap it all, this was connected to the upstairs lighting circuit inside the house!

Who wired this? The bloke who sells batteries at Tesco? ho ho ho

Yeee haaa [FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY]

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Disgraceful that someone can get away with such shoddy work.

You could say.. that in a certain way.. that is almost beautiful

[emoji16] [emoji16] [emoji16]

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That's just dangerous!