pictures taken while visiting various sites

[murdock]

no enclosure on the isolator

[murdock]

the person didnt even know this ballast was burning in the roof i found it while attending to another problem.

[murdock]

this could be your ceiling...no cover on the junction box twin + earth connected straight in the top of the box...the people who do this work call themselves electricians...i can see why i am out priced on all the jobs i quote for because i sure as heck could not live with myself if this was the kind of work i was offering but again i will say...the customer wants the cheapest quote this is what you get...i just hope for your sake your house doesnt catch on fire because you and your kids could be in the house sleeping at the time...at least you wont have to worry because the insurance will more than likely just pay out...not do an investigation to determine whether or not it was caused by faulty wiring...you would need to be careful because they to will get wise one of these days at the rate buildings are burning down...as you know if you have an accident and your tyres on your vehicle are smooth or your vehicle is unroadworthy they will not pay out for the repairs to be done...i am sure they are going to get wise when it comes to pay outs for illegal wiring which causes your house to burn down.

[murdock]

to the man on the street you wont even see a problem here...the 30 amp circuit breaker has been bypassed and it is now tripping a 50 amp circuit breaker upstream...by the way this DB is in the frail care centre of the old age home.

[murdock]

this person smelt something burning...i found this behind the washing machine...the fire had already started.

[murdock]

i took this image while doing a routine check at a customers premises note the temperature 102 degrees

[murdock]

you wouldnt even see this with the naked eye i was called out because there was a buzzing sound in the DB...i identified the circuit imediately with my thermal imager then procceded to test the circuit with a current clamp the idiot/electrician who wired this panel didnt even do any load tests the blue phase was loaded at 74 amps on a 60 amp 3 phase circuit breaker...the red phase had 10 amps and the yellow/white 16 amps... i balanced the phases and now it is working fine.

[murdock]

i could carry on all night posting pictures...reports sent to the ECA...complaints to the newspaper...wendy knowler...department of labour of more serious issues like the electrical condition in shopping centres...but they all fall on deaf ears because personally i think nobody wants to take on this massive problem.

[Marq]

I am not familiar with electrical problems/assessments/compliance and the various codes of the ECA and who is responsible for what. I only have my experiences to go on here and it would be nice to know what the actual situation is with regard to responsibilities.

As an example - It seems that if I have an electrical compliance certificate in hand (say after having bought a house) and a problem crops up later on with, say junction boxes not having covers on in the roof. I have to look for that electrician to come and rectify the problem. He is my only recourse of action. If he has 'disappeared' - there is nothing I can do beside get another electrician in at my cost to rectify the problem.

ECA or whoever issued the electrician with a certificate to practice is not held responsible to resolve the situation.

Is this true?

I recently had work done where cable to a plug in one of my rooms was rewired and joined to an existing junction box in the roof. I asked for a compliance certificate for the work done and was told that I was not compliant as, one of the many problems, the junction boxes had no covers. Now this 'electrician' says there were no covers to start with, so he did not put any on when he fixed the wiring problem.

So where do I go to resolve this - the original electrician who gave the compliance certificate when I bought the house, bearing in mind that nobody has been in the roof since and that situation must have existed at the time of sale - or to this electrician for not having done a simple task like put a cover on. Putting a cover on would be less time than writing the report and discussing who is responsible for what, cost a few bucks and problem resolved. Or is the ECA responsible for or have insurance for certifying idiots and wanna be electricians that they say can do the job.

To an outsider here - it appears as if there are no real ground rules, no one to take responsibility, anyone with a screwdriver in hand can be an electrician and one can get ripped off by any 'certified' sparky.

but they all fall on deaf ears because personally i think nobody wants to take on this massive problem.

- I assume that you know this game and have the same problems and concerns that I have. So when you have a problem............what do us non wired peoples do?

[murdock]

all i can say is i feel for the public if there were 30 COC complaints a day on average this year and only 30 of those complaint have been attended to so far the whole year what chance do you think your complaint will be one of them?

[murdock]

2 things wrong here firstly the box was plastered closed and secondly the one wire is a 4 mm and the other 2.5 mm if there was a 20 amp circuit breaker in the DB feeding this circuit it wouldnt be a problem... but the fact that there was a 30 amp breaker makes it a problem...it is extremely difficult to find a box plastered closed...so if you see an electrician doing this take a photo report him and record it for your own good.

[murdock]

can someone please explain to me how on earth you get the cover off this DB to carry out routine maintenance or add a cable or replace a circuit breaker because i sure as heck couldnt figue this one out...i had to use extreme force with a big wood saw... the owner wasnt impressed... but hey... he should have thought about that when he told the cupboard company to cover the DB in the first place.

[murdock]

if this is your DB best you be getting an electrican who knows a little about electricity.

[murdock]

this picture looks harmless...where in fact this is one of the most dangerous pictures i have...this is a 3 phase 400 volt cable strap to a refrigeration pipe below a counter in a shop...the cable is joined together with connector blocks and taped up with insulation tape... so what is so bad about that you ask...well the firstly it is on the ground the joint are not ip65 which means that when the people working here get the mop and start cleaning...the joints are submersed in water... how someone hasnt been electricuted here yet i am still puzzled...the only explaination i have is that when they clean... the motors are not running or they are standing in gum boots cleaning.

[Dave A]

I recently had work done where cable to a plug in one of my rooms was rewired and joined to an existing junction box in the roof. I asked for a compliance certificate for the work done and was told that I was not compliant as, one of the many problems, the junction boxes had no covers. Now this 'electrician' says there were no covers to start with, so he did not put any on when he fixed the wiring problem.

That just blows me away. At least put a cover on the box you've connected too, surely!

The whole thing with missing box covers is pure laziness. We've been to brand new installations, and not a lid anywhere.

I'm printing this thread for discussion at our next production meeting on Monday. The least I can do is make sure we don't have these types of quality issues in my own organisation.