Moved to a new house

Hi Peter here, new to the forum, please be gentle.

I have just moved to a new home which is a small cottage in a rural area in Somerset. We are looking at doing some work to the cottage and have planning permission for a small extension. We are in the process of getting the trades together and have been quite taken back by the electrician who we are not sure about. The house is located up a lane some 175m away cables mounted on poles from a white box on the first pole at the entrance of the drive. We have lots of trees up the lane and the old owner did some electrical work himself we think. So the other day we had a fuse blow in the white plastic box so we called sse who told us to ring western power. The guy came and put a new fuse in. We asked why he thought this might have happened to which he told us to speak to an electrician as it is our responsibility from the white box to the house. 

Having found an electrician he has said that we need to bury a cable to the house from the white box and that it is going to cost us a lot of money. I'm unsure what to do?

Thanks

Peter

cables can be overhead, however 175mtr is a long distance and would require a fairly large cable. id be looking at why the fuse has blown, and if the existing supply is adequate. of course, stuff like checkingt he wiring should have been checked before you bought it. was this done, and were any issues found?

DNO are only reponsbile for their supply to the cutout, the rest is your problem

First up , you shouldn't need to say  "New to Forum  please be gentle"      There no reason why anyone should  get bolshie  , we try to help ,  you're  not in the trade  and we understand that .   

Right ,  we cannot tell without being there , why the main fuse went  , no point trying to guess .      However if your sparks said  your main supply needs to be buried  I'm wondering  if they are old  , possibly separate  L & N  with rubber insulation missing  from them ,  have they touched together ?   Has there been high winds  ?  

You need a detailed explanation from your sparks really,  he,s the one that,s had a look .       What does he consider is the problem ?    

Thanks for your responses. A condition report was completed but we think the electrician who did it was a family relative of the previous owner and is no longer trading as I searched for his name but could not find anything. Anyway, according to the report everything was ok, however the electrician who we called after the fuse fiasco was an NICEIC registered electrician. I'd never heard of that organisation in my life, although a friend of mine down the pub thought it stood for the national institute of completely elaborate insured crooks, I think he'd had one too many that night. He said to me that the cables overhead were my responsibility. He talked to me about the overhead cables saying they were separate and in parts had no cover. He also pointed out to me that the cables had been joined at some point in the middle perhaps one had been pulled down by a branch in the past. He also pointed out the connections to the cottage were dangerous as the cable goes to the bracket then another cable comes out of the cottage and somehow connects to it with some lump of metal, he said the cable that came out of the house was a tail.

Peter Lane said:

although a friend of mine down the pub thought it stood for the national institute of completely elaborate insured crooks

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:slap

got any pics of this overhead line? it may be compliant, it may not be. hard to say from your description

Peter Lane said:

national institute of completely elaborate insured crooks,

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:slap

Its actually the widest known  registration scheme for electricians  ,  there are others  .    However your description , to those of us who pay to keep that organisation going ,  is a gem  .   It even outshines   what our illustrious member  Kerching  usually comes up with  .      I await him reading this .  

By the way if you feel you are actually being  ripped off  or otherwise  by the electrician  , you report him to  NICEIC    who SHOULD take some action to protect you .

Like Gas Safe .  

It does sound like a fair comment by the guy  though ,  as Andy says   ,  some photos would be good  .  It sounds like the overheads have lost some of  their insulation .

To replace , it may be cheaper to have new overheads  than  trenching  and laying a new supply cable  .  

Overheads are always  prone to damage  from weather , trees  etc.  

You need to make 10 posts  on here before you can upload photos   ,  or a Mod can over ride that as its obvious you are genuine .  

We'd be interested in  what is going on with your supply  so keep in touch .       By the way  , where is your meter  , in the  cottage or at the power pole ?  

I'm thinking  if the meter is in the cottage ,   you &  your electrician can't actually work on those overheads  as  anything BEFORE  the meter  is the property of the DNO  .

( Power supply company)      

So lets try and be clear what you have.

The white plastic box at the bottom of your drive.  Is this a "Meter box"  i.e is your electricity meter in there?  What else is in there a switch fuse perhaps?

I assume it was put there as the cost of getting the DNO to run a supply cable all thge way to the house 175 metres up the drive was considered too much at the time. But if the DNO had done it, they would have used the correct size cable and it would have been expensive.

So now you need to get that cable checked and possibly replaced.  I would start by getting an electrician to do an EICR (Electrical Installation Condition Report)  and that will come with a list of what's wrong and recommendations to correct the failings.  That may well include replacing that 175M cable and that will not be cheap as it needs to be a big cable for that length to prevent excessive voltage drop.

But that should not cause the suppliers fuse to blow, so there is very likely a fault on that cable or somewhere else.  And one potential problem with a very long cable, is in the event of a short circuit, the fault current might not be large enough to blow a fuse quickly enough.

As a bit of background, do you notice the lights in the house dim a bit when you turn on a large load like a kettle?

Did the electrcian that visited say anything about the size of the existing cable or the size of the replacement cable that he was recommending?

Yes I saw the meter in the white box at the end of the lane when the DNO turned up. There is also a rusty looking switch that I can turn all the power on and off, I believe this is where the guy replaced the fuse. The electrician that turned up after has indicated that a buried cable would be expensive as the size of the cable would be dependent on the amount of power we use in the cottage. We haven't had any dimming of lights as yet. Is that something that can happen?

Can you take some pictures and post them on a photo hosting site of what's inside the meter box, and any you can get of the outgoing cable.  A picture what happens to it in the cottage would be interesting as well.

If the lights don't dim when the kettle goes on that is a good sign.  It would still be interesting to try and work out the size of the existing cable. 

Evans Electric said:

By the way if you feel you are actually being  ripped off  or otherwise  by the electrician  , you report him to  NICEIC    who SHOULD take some action to protect you .

Like Gas Safe .  

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To my understanding they would only get involved with complaints relating to dangerous work, not contractual issues, or advice given etc. So if the other electrician has done no work so far, there would be nothing to complain about. He has just given his opinion about this overhead cable.  http://www.niceic.com/find-a-contractor/complaints   I would suggest you get two other electricians to have a look as the general rule of thumb for any work, is to get two or three quotes before making any decisions. I am surprised you didn't undertake your own electrical inspection of the property before purchasing it? 

Doc H.

Pictures of the white box, fuse, meter, distribution board (fuse box), incoming cable and outgoing cables would be very helpful.

It would be interesting to know the size of the fuse that blew and needed to be replaced - its not unknown, in my experience, for a fuse to go for no "apparent" reason

How do you heat your home?

As for the EICR, did it cover the circuit from the meter to the fuseboard in the house? or just the circuits from the fuseboard inside the house?

So the meter is in the white box  ...... which means the customer is indeed responsible for the 175mtrs of cable  down to the house .     

Evans Electric said:

So the meter is in the white box  ...... which means the customer is indeed responsible for the 175mtrs of cable  down to the house .     

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Which is going to be hellishly expensive to replace, glad I'm not paying for it.

Lets see what appears to be wrong with it first  . 

Well I have taken a picture of the meter box.

http://tinypic.com/r/k4b1io/9

I struggled to get the image uploaded onto this forum so I managed to get it uploaded and linked back to this forum, hope it works.

I haven't taken pictures of the connections to the house yet. I'm hoping to do that soon.

The EICR mentioned nothing regarding the overhead cable or its connections, I think it was done rather quickly.

The forum won't let you post pictures directly until you have made 10 posts, an anti spam measure I believe?

Why 2 electricity meters? has there been a dispute about a bill and one is a check meter?

Otherwise nothing especially odd about it.  What rating fuse is in the switch fuse top left (I suspect the loose fuse in the box is the dead one he swapped out)  That switch fuse I don't think is rusty, I think that's bakerlite.

It was actually good of the DNO to change that fuse, if he had been a jobsworth he could quite rightly have said that is the customers fuse and you need your own electrician to change it.  The only one the DNO are responsible for is the incoming fuse to the bottom right of the meters

The outgoing cables top left look a reasonable size but given the distance may still be a bit small.  Can you take a photo of a bit of the overhead line particularly at one of the poles.  

Can you photograph the pages of the EICR with personal information redacted for us to have a look,  I am interrested in his reading for Ze and Prospective fault current.

as Dave said, if its the fuse in the enclosure that was blown, its not DNO's responsiblity, its yours, so they did you a favour replacing it. also looks like a check meter has been fitted, normally youd only have 1 meter

the cable looks small for 175mtr, although its possible that there is a join outside to a larger cable that wont fit into the fuse. any pics of the cable?

No their is no larger cables outside. The cables leaving the meter box are the same overhead all the way to the house. I will try and get some pictures of the house bracket connections at some point. If I were to talk to the electrician again what might it be good to understand, perhaps the size of the cable he would want to bury and how much it would cost. Obviously, you have all said that a large cable would be needed and that it will cost. At the end of day I have been pondering why on earth would I pay out to have a cable buried. Why not wait for something to happen to the overhead cables then fix it? Would an electrician turn a blind eye to the overhead cable and get on with the work for the extension?

if its in a dangerous condition then i wouldnt ignore if. it is not compliant but safe enough then depends. it doesnt have to be buried though, if it it beyond repair then you could replac it with another overhead cable