On 02/09/2010 20:53, Adrian C wrote:


OK, 9am tomorrow I'm going to warm up their 'general enquiry' phone
wires a bit.


Job done :-) Thanks all for the comments.

After 10 minutes of SWMBO blowing her fuse on the phone, 3 electrical
company vehicles turned up. One of these was a transit towing an
excavator on a trailer, another was a van and the other a range rover.
Disappointed to see no helicopter.

Anyway four nice chaps looked at the nicely laid pavement outside our
house, decided that they weren't going to dig all that up to temporarily
isolate us, and instead proceeded to the nearest electrical manhole
cover to work out which phase to isolate by pulling things.

So unfortunately a number of our neighbours (some out of 50 houses in
the street) were without electricity for a good hour, and when power was
returned their burglar alarms tripped, the noise set the dogs off, and
our mad nutty next door neighbour (sadly on the same phase, but
different planet) stuck even more pins in his voodoo doll replica of me.

The replacement work involved melting the semicircular 'boat' of
bitumen, cleaning up the cables and installing a single 60A fuse in the
live conductor, linking out the neutral and fitting a new earth to the
incoming cable shield.

http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac327/turnstyler/newunderthestairs.jpg

This is now me wiring mess, which one day I'll get around to sorting
with a new consumer unit. I asked whether they could fit me an isolating
switch past the meter but was told they stopped doing that favour for
customers 5 years ago.

Another neighbour popped in and asked whether his similar 1930's fuses
could be changed and was told it's done on an emergency case by case
basis - 'just phone up the helpline and tell 'em you smell burning, and
it will be done...'. Ah, it was _that_ easy then :-(

For interest, these are the removed fuses.
http://i912.photobucket.com/albums/ac327/turnstyler/IMG_3463.jpg

--
Adrian C