We sometimes make reference to dodgy wiring found in equipment. This video made by an electrician in London shows house wiring that beggars belief:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcWIKZtCPwA

The blue and brown hard wiring threw me out for a few seconds as we don't use the international colour scheme in hard wiring in Australia. At first I thought the brown wires were just red ones that had overheated.

To the wiring itself - however did that job should be made to use it, basically. There's just no excuse for it. If I confronted a job like that I wouldn't bother doing anything apart from providing the landlord with a quote to strip and refit the whole dwelling. If the law is to be obeyed in NSW, if a licenced electrician sees a job like that they are obliged to disconnect it. To be fair though, this is obviously a case of systemic wrongs committed over time and not just a dodgey job done by the last person to carry out work.

Aside from the wiring itself, light globes should never face downwards where they risk being struck with someone's head. They should all face sideways so they are recessed within the width of the floor joists. All metal parts should be earthed. An earth lead should be provided at each lighting point. All earth wiring should be insulated in new installations. The 'council fuse' should obviously have a cartridge with the correct 100 amp HRC fuse in it rather than the 2.5mm patch. The switchboard must be installed above a level floor and no higher than 1800mm from the floor and it's lid should be on. Whilst the mixing of breaker brands isn't itself an issue, some brands don't fit well in other brand's chassis, despite DIN Rail supposedly being a universal standard. If a breaker needs to be forced in then it shouldn't be used.

That whole place is just a disaster waiting to happen.

I've seen the same type of installation here. Hard to say whether these jobs are done by the home handyman, a lazy electrician or a bit of both. The latter wouldn't surprise me, given some of the things I've seen in my career.

I can identify with some of this. The place was originally wired in 1962. The house was demolished, but the sheds were left all running overheads. I moved back in 2012 and a new house was built.

In the transition the Shearing Shed shower became the worker. Its feeder ended up going open (max 30A) as some idiot used a clamp for an earth wire, instead of a line tap, as a joiner. How that did not start a grass fire I do not know. The same went for the longest overhead (460m) where the active down lead had managed to chafe through on the metal pole. Naturally at the distribution point off of Utility there was one fuse for 3 overheads.

The genius that installed the underground line to a studio prior to that studio supplying the house, which has a sub board, off of the studio (planned that way to get power to build the house) was found to have made several idiotic decisions like using wire as a buss bar, when real electricians went to wire the house to the distributor.

When the whole power system was under grounded we found that we had to dig up 20m of underground cable (house & studio 60m) so that we could hook it to the new distribution & meter box: One in Four out. Of course we were obliged to change all of the 60's fuse boxes (4) to modern. Same genius had done work in shed 2, Two real electricians (both of which I found out had sacked him) could not understand the mess in the fuse box: It should have been a new one. Only his wiring had issues in that shed. In shed 1 his first & only effort saw him break a light, but the prize effort was getting bitten fixing the light, after putting a screw that he was told not to use through shed 1's down lead active, prior to this (wooden frame shed).

There were a couple of other issues in that shed where wrong gauge wire was used and a Neutral had melted into an earth. The latter did not matter with the overheads where Neutral was Earth but it does with an RCD.

The Third shed escaped pretty much unscathed, but it like the other sheds had prearranged modifications, & additions done. These were prearranged, so that the new circuits & boxes were designed to handle that.

I would say "they walk among us": But if this one keeps going it may not be for long.

Hard to say whether these jobs are done by the home handyman, a lazy electrician or a bit of both.

Given that it's London, my guess is that work was done by an unlicensed import, and "less for cash".

In a follow-up video that sparkie rectifies all of it.

As an aside, note that the Poms earth the gas supply, which is verboten here and for a pretty good reason I reckon.

...and for a pretty good reason I reckon.

Yes, lightning strikes. Parts of the gas piping were made of lead way back when the rule came in. This included the connecting pipes to the gas meter. This was also usually where an equipotential bond was placed and of course, lead has a low melting point. Pipes in older houses that were chased into walls for gas lighting were also made of lead.

I have my very own house wiring horror stories:

Many years ago when I was a student I lived in a share house in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran. This house was very old and was built in 1882. Nothing much had changed since it was first built. It still had the old gas lighting fixtures on the wall & the mechanical servants bell system still worked. The servants bells consisted of a row of bells in different sizes so each bell would sound different. The bells were attached by wires and pulleys to levers in each room with another pull knob outside the front door.

I don't know what year the electric light was laid on in Prahran. When ever it was the original lighting wiring was still in use when I lived that house. Because the internal walls were single brick & thus no cavity, the lights were controlled by ceiling pull switches. Sometimes the pull strings would break - not easy to fix with 13ft height ceilings!

The original wiring was laid all over the house, inside the ceiling, in wooden conduits. The real scary bit was that some of the power points, which looked like a 1950's addition, were just simply added from the ancient lighting wiring. I remember a light switch getting hot when some other appliance was being used.

The final straw was when one night sparks started flying out of the plaster ceiling rose in the hallway. A call to the agent under threat of having a electrical inspection arranged quickly got the tight arsed landlord into action to have whole house rewired. The poor guy was smarting bad!!

I still have six of the old porcelain ceiling roses I salvaged from the pile of rubbish left behind.

My current house which I bought over 20 years ago had some wiring issues which prevented us from moving in straight away. The house was built in the mid 1930's but had been completely rewired in the mid 1980's. My house is semi-detached, separated from next door by a double brick cavity wall.

It turned out long before I bought my place next door had some horticultural activities going on up in their ceiling. They had run a power cable through a hole in the cavity in to my place and tapped in to a power point. When it was discovered the electrical inspectors found a fault which prevented us from moving in until remedied. The nature or location of the fault was never disclosed to me, and on appearance I couldn't see anything wrong.

I engaged a sparky (Yellow Pages) who charged me a grand to run a thicker wire between the main fuse box & a sub fuse box at the rear. A inspector came and ticked the work off & we had the power on at last. Two years later when I was doing some painting I took the screws out of the very power point that the horticulturists had tapped their wire into. Guess what I found? The active and neutral wire had been reversed.

I was frikken livid! I'd been ripped off by a sparky & the inspector had completely missed the original fault all along!!

Guess what I found? The active and neutral wire had been reversed.

I think I've mentioned here before that in the 1980s I bought a 1920s vintage Federation house. As was my habit when looking over such places with agents before buying, I always took as good a look as possible at the plumbing and the wiring to get a feel for what I'd be in for after purchase.

The place I bought had gal water pipe (no meter!) and I could see by the exposed electrical meter board that the wiring was cotton covered rubber running through metal conduit, so I factored remediation of those into the purchase price.

Before we moved in, I climbed up to the fuse box on a step ladder and pulled the power fuse. I was greeted by a copper plated fuse holder containing a paper clip. Seems the old woman (recently deceased) who previously owned the place had grown tired of blowing the fuse and remedied it via paper clip. I gather she had radiators on in practically every room all day. The old wiring was probably as hot as the rooms below.

With that replaced by fuse wire I proceeded to check every power point with a tester and found combinations of active/neutral reversed and no earth. IIRC, one GPO had the earth and neutral reversed.

So, I proceed to remedy those situations and arranged for quotes to have the whole place rewired and breakers installed.

GTC,
Did you know, and not many people do, That you can trace the history of your old house for free on micro fish at the Mitchell libiary?
I did some restoation work on a Federation house and when it was finished the owner wanted the history of the house.
We got an amazing amount of information there and the origanal owner was a doctor and the house had a name which we also got there. During the depression we found out that the basment was rented out to a large family and they all lived in the basement during the depression.
The house was restored and the history was wanted by the owner who was planning to sell the old house for top dollar.
Pete
There is a name of how they store the information, you need the name of the file , I cant remember what they call it

Pete: as matter of fact, I traced the property's ownership right back to the original land grant. Back then, pre computerization of Old System titles, you could visit the Land Titles Office at 1 Prince Albert Road and pull the volumes and folios yourself free of charge, so I did.

I've also traced the title chain of the property that my workshop (built in 2011) sits on back to the original grant, but all via online searches that cost money nowadays. That one is a fascinating story.

It was very interesting, but I love history.
I will see if I can find out what the name of the file is.
All we had was the address and lot number to start with .
Pete

Pete

You don't need to go to the Mitchell Library to pore over microfiche anymore. You can now do it in the comfort of your home or even on a smart device.

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/learn/search-our-collections/sands-directory/sands-search

Hahaha
Old school see ! Ha
This was a while back I did this.
Maybe 12 years now.
I will have a look at that in the morning ,im in my shed tonight but off to bed now.
Pete

They had run a power cable through a hole in the cavity in to my place and tapped in to a power point.

Not only does this amount to theft on the part of the neighbour, even if they didn't know they should have known, but this is highly illegal. A single premise cannot have two electrical supplies coming in from separate metering. It should be documented in your area's service rules. Whoever set that up would have been fined quite heavily if caught.

You did the right thing by having that chopped.

Before we moved in, I climbed up to the fuse box on a step ladder and pulled the power fuse. I was greeted by a copper plated fuse holder containing a paper clip. Seems the old woman (recently deceased) who previously owned the place had grown tired of blowing the fuse and remedied it via paper clip. I gather she had radiators on in practically every room all day. The old wiring was probably as hot as the rooms below.

It's a classic in old homes. VIR power cable wasn't rated as highly as PVC wire is now. It would have been three core instead of the now-required seven core and would have had a cross section of between 1.5mm2 and 2.0mm2 rather than the now-obligatory 2.5mm2. Running more than one heating appliance per circuit, regardless of whether it was a heater, an electric jug or even an element in the old Wilkins Servis washing machines would have been a recipe for disaster. Even in older homes with very few GPOs, there should have been two power circuits unless the dwelling had fire places or a water radiator system. One circuit would have covered the kitchen and the laundry and the other for all other rooms combined. Victorian-era homes would have done with a gas-fired copper in the laundry rather than a washing machine.

And of course, radios and other small appliances would have simply been plugged into light sockets as the watts used would have been similar.

Victorian-era homes would have done with a gas-fired copper in the laundry rather than a washing machine.

My place had the remnants of a wood-fired copper in the laundry with chimney above it. There was also a sconce gaslight fitting on the lounge room wall beside the disused fireplace with a thin (3/8 inch?) lead pipe from it into the roof where it joined a gal pipe. However, the gas had been disconnected years ago. There was no evidence of where the gas meter had been.

I removed the copper stand to make more room and demolished the thee chimneys because they were ready to fall down due to crumbling mortar.

You'll most likely find the gas light's pipe just randomly chased in. They were rarely plumb or level. Yes, 3/8th sounds about right - they didn't need much size just for one light or two light fittings as the fittings were very low pressure and fitted with mantles like camping lamps.

Watch what the copper's flue was made of, if it is still in situ. Sometimes it was metal. Sometimes it was fibro.