JJ
wibbled on Wednesday 27 January 2010 12:17

new ring all wired up and waiting connection to CU, which I will do
once I have performed standard tests on it.

my question is how do people deal with paranoia issues? for example..
I am always worried that the action of pushing the fitting back into
the pattress has found a weakness in my stripping, twisting, screwing
in and loosened a cable or something. My standard practice is to leave
it over night then unscrew the fitting and tug on the wires with
needle nosed pliers to check they are still all secure - its total
paranoia I realize, I should just trust my handiwork.

Failing that I should trust the RCBO to detect faults (as it did when
I trod a junction box in the loft and ended up rewiring my whole
upstairs light ring, only with no junction boxes).

What do sparkies do? they clearly don't have time to double check all
their work - do they push it into place on the pattress then pull it
out again and visually inspect? or do they never make errors?

What do DIYers do? do they worry about every little detail in their
work?

JJ


I

a) Use 35mm back boxes (accept you may be rewiring into existing shallower
ones)

b) I use the "wire is as long as the diagonal of the box" rule of thumb.
Then I form the wires into smooth loops so that they tend to collapse
helically when the plate is replaced. Doing this right helps avoids the
screws. I also accept this is more difficult with a 25mm box.

c) I test everything using a low ohms meter (Megger, but if you have a high
quality multimeter, it would go a long way to being useful) and an
insulation test. Even a low quality meter will find basic breaks and
gratuitous problems. Are you familiar with end-end and "figure-8" tests? You
need a test plug for the latter, so you can short the wires at the CU then
make tests at every socket.

HTH

Tim

--
Tim Watts

Managers, politicians and environmentalists: Nature's carbon buffer.