Member: Wolfie
I turned up at the house in Wakefield “Power goes off when set on” (or similar) it said on the job sheet. It didn’t make much sense but that wasn’t unusual, customers have an odd way with fault descriptions, the old dears verbal description didn’t help much either, but I was pointed at the Kitchen G8.
So I pulled out the set and took the back off straight away, there was nothing obvious, fuse intact, nothing blown/burnt and no shorts across the incoming supply. So I plugged it in then switched on and was plunged into a silent darkness, the house lights went off, the radio went off, the TV blaring in the front room went silent, everything. “Dammit, it’s blown the fuse box” I thought and switched it off again.
Everything instantly came back on. WTF?
Several more switching on’s revealed a little buzzing arcing noise coming from the little larder just inside the back door, where the fuse box was. Every time the kitchen TV was switched on. Trying to explain to the customer why their G8 was triggering a house wiring fault when nothing else did (including the living room TV) was complicated and eventually it was left to me to explain to the Council that an Electrician really needed to attend ASAP before there was a fire.
I had the same thing in January this year. All the lights flickered for several seconds every now and again and when it was bat the computers rebooted.
While I was climbing up to check the voltage across the meter tales I spotted a puff of smoke close to the incoming overhead cable but could not see where it was coming from due to my position.I stopped and moved to outside to get a better look and there was a terminal block happily chuffing away like a steam engine with magic smoke.
It was then a case of listening to horrid music for 90 minutes before the power company engineer was on his way out to fix it.
I had an almost identical incident with a customer with a G8 television. It would intermittently shut down and refuse to come on. Removed to the workshop where no fault was found. Taken back to the customers premises to find it shut down again. Removed the mains plug which came away leaving the wires behind. These where a bit blackened due to arching. I went around all the downstairs ringmain sockets and half of them where lose. All tightened and customer happy. I told them to get and electrician in to check the upstairs ring main sockets. This was in 1978.