www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

I am fairly new to this and was totally caught out. Customer complained that her shower kept "blowing the fuse". I was totally not expecting to see THIS! What even is that? Computer cable? It is a miracle that it ever operated the shower.
(sorry it is sideways - computer would not allow it the right way up)

Advice please - the customer has the minor works certificate so I know who fitted this. I think that using that wire is not an error as three strands connected to nothing and he should have known it was the wrong cable. Should I contact him? Report him? Or is the protocol that we stick together? That looks downright dangerous to me!

The cable you see is used for central heating controls / valves.
If it were me I would just change the cable / switches and charge the customer accordingly.

You will spend (waste) more time "reporting" the person who did the job and at the end of the day achieve nothing.

(yes it shouldn't be that way, but it is)

I changed it … but only after giving a fixed price for the job. As I said, I am new to this and got caught out. Plus it was a little old lady and I am a soft touch. However, I hate pulling cables through attics so I was feeling more than grumpy while doing it, hence the above post. I see it is low smoke low odour cable but surely that cable could not power any kind of heating? If I had to guess, I would say it was intended for 3 Amp of 6 Amp max. The finishing touch - with so many colours to choose from, when making the choice of which to use and which to just cut short, he didn't even make a sensible choice of colours.

Hello LadySpark, not sure what you mean by: “He didn’t make the right choice of colours”?
I’m no SPARK, but looks like he did make an effort: Red, Blue & Yellow/Green. That’s ok isn’t it?

kintangoman wrote: ↑Sat Nov 30, 2019 6:45 pm Hello LadySpark, not sure what you mean by: “He didn’t make the right choice of colours”?
I’m no SPARK, but looks like he did make an effort: Red, Blue & Yellow/Green. That’s ok isn’t it?

Old colours: red = live, black = neutral
New colours: brown = live, blue = neutral

At the end of the day, a wire is a wire whatever colour the sheath but it is normal to put a sleeve of the correct colour over the wire if you have good reason to use the wrong colour. Ideally mixing old and new wiring colours should be avoided and there should be a sticker on the consumer unit if you must do it. He didn't need to do it as the shower had its own line so he could have stuck with the old colours but chose the unusual combination of a mix of old and new.

It isn't a big deal. Using ridiculously thin cable that could have caught fire is a big deal.

If is was tripping out then the cable must have melted somewhere,with such an heavy load would have thought that the cores shown would have melted too, did the Dipstick replace the mcb or added another circuit .

That's 0.75mm heat resistant flex. It is used for heating system controls

Remember the FCU on a heating system should be fused down to 3A the loads are very small especially if they have modern induction pumps fitted

The shower had its own line with its own MCB, which is correct. I used the dodgy wire to pull the correct wire through the attic. It was pretty dirty with some scuff marks where I had used it to pull the new, thicker cable but I could see no obvious place where it had burnt through. Probably just the sheath to the inner cables had melted, causing a short. Thankfully the MCB worked. I changed the MCB anyway because they are a couple of quid and I wanted the entire line to be my work with nothing from the person who fitted this. Knowing my luck there might be some way to fake the amps on a fuse or something so it was worth a couple of quid to be sure.

Absolutely agree LS!

If you was the last person there leave it to your standards not some bodgers