Here is the thread for your stories/videos on old and illegal electrics, and for experiences from real life of general electrical disasters.
I'll start this thread rolling with the following true story:
My brother told me of a job he was on in an old house in Kilkeel, Co. Down, NI a few years ago (he has been a burglar alarm maintenance man for many years). Basically he went up into the attic of this old house and was confronted with an electrical wiring system that was rather eccentric to say the least of it. Apparently back when the house had been wired originally (a
long time ago one supposes!) the practice had been to wire the house using only the bare current-carrying copper wire that one would find inside our much safer plastic covered wires nowadays. The lady of the house warned him (superfluous to say!) "I think it might be live up there!" In effect, if anyone had touched the live copper wire that went around the wooden support (wood is not a conductor of electricity luckily) it was nailed to they would most likely have been electrocuted. I asked him about this little story a few days ago and said that I wondered what one would have called this particular wiring system. I was expecting a name for it. His reply was simply, "Insanity, insanity!"
I wonder if any of our members here have any other stories about electrical wiring disasters they'd like to share with us?
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