Whilst we attended this property to carry out an EICR in Strood, we found a number of non-conformances.
This property had never had an EICR before, because it was previously owner-occupied, rather than a rental.
Aside having an old fusebox with no RCD, this property was littered with a number of non-conformances, such as broken socket ring circuits, IP breaches, broken electrical equipment, but the two prettiest of all were these: A fused spur in the garage had shattered, and some very questionable creative electrics in the garden!
The fused spur was probably put together really quite well initially, and if it wasn't for an impact that shattered the casing, it likely would have continued as a safe part of this property's electrics.
The junction box that was tucked underneath the shed, however, was never safe from the minute it was put in.
Let's talk about what we can see here...
Singles on show - the colourful inside of the cables do not have a second barrier of protection - that's a C2.
electrical connections are not mechanically protected from physical strain - there is nothing stopping you tugging, tripping, or snagging these wires and pulling them completely out of the junction box. That's a C2. There's a few things that might happen:
You pull the cable out and nothing happens (if you're lucky)
You loosen a connection inside the junction box, creating a hot spot.
You pull the cable out of its terminal and it's free to wiggle around inside the junction box, potentially touching things it shouldn't and making things go bang
You pull the cable out and it's live!
The electrical installation is not correctly IP rated for its environment
Most junction boxes of this kind generally have a hard time satisfying IP 33. The bare minimum IP rating for an item of electrical equipment going outdoors is IP44, preferably way above that. Especially when this junction box was tucked underneath a shed. Who's to say someone won't go and jet wash the nearby pathway? Water for jetwashes find themselves into seemingly the driest of enclosures! And what if there was heavy downfall and the junction box finds itself in a bit of a puddle?
Something you wouldn't be able to see, and if I remember back I seem to think this was wired into the socket circuit - and if it was, it wouldn't surprise me - meaning if too much current went through this wire (more than it could handle), and the breaker would keep on pumping. Meaning melting cables, burning, and fires.
All in all, it was very likely a DIY project that should never have been embarked on - to make all of this safe, it was only economically viable to isolate the power.
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