garden socket

[JMN2]

My money is on a wiring centre/junction box in the garage.

[Devjon]

Dod,
I've been pulled in to this thread as it reads like a detective novel.
Please persevere until the source and route of the mystery cable is resolved.

Colonel Mustard, in the Garden, with the Metal Detector...

[csearle]

Dod,
Please persevere until the source and route of the mystery cable is resolved..

I suspect our Dod is a bit of a tease and he'll release updates on a weekly basis! C.

[JMN2]

Recced, this is currently the most interesting thread at TLF at the moment.

[Devjon]

On a tangent, and this is back in the 1980's.

I was having a day off work and saw a Water Utilities vehicle pull in to our Cul de Sac. A man got out, opened the back of the van and spent half an hour walking up and down our cul de sac with an electronic detector and earphones scanning the ground. He then got back in his van and drove off. Twenty minutes later he comes back followed by a second van, they both get out and have a chat before the second guy gets a pair of dowsing rods and walks slowly up and down the cul de sac. He marks the ground with spray paint and both drivers get in their vans and disappear.

Unfortunately I was back at work the next day and never saw how accurate the dowsing rods were.

[Dod1010]

I wish it were all that simple. I now discover of course that my late wife planted a lot of stuff close by the house walls and I am having to pull that back to see if I can find a disappearing cable, so far to no avail. I have found dowsing rods to work, but probably not for an electric cable.

I have the stump of my tree (about 3 feet in diameter) which I do mind as a feature in my lawn but I really do not want a discoloured box on the end of a black cable. BTW it did not cost much to remove the tree (£350, I think I got a bargain) but I am quoted the same again to grind out the trunk and understandably the guy will not even look at it until I can sort the cable.

Dod

[csearle]

Have you established whether it is live or not Dod? Apart for the continuing search for the other cable end that should be your starting point. If it is live then you can establish the circuit it's on. Having done that you can localise where the cable is likely to go.

By the way, are your circuits protected by any residual current devices, RCDs? If so then this could also be used help localise the circuit.

What sort of fuseboard does the installation have?

Chris

[Dod1010]

Chris

Thanks no I have not yet established if it is live. As to the 'fuse box' . I have three installed about 20 years ago when the house was extended and they are of the 'trip' variety,. They do so on every excuse including when an old style incandescent lamp goes, leaving me incandescent because it often blows the fuse in the plug as well. I of course fix the bulb (usually with new style) and flick the switch on again, replacing the fuse in the plug if I need to. Does that make them officially rcd's?

I will report progress but I am getting close to asking my local electrician for help.

But I think I see what you mean. If I establish that the wire is live I could switch the rcds off one by one until one cuts the current. Then what?
(See how little I know about it?)

Dod

[PinkDalek]

Recced, this is currently the most interesting thread at TLF at the moment.

Yes it is interesting but have you seen this thread at Games, Puzzles and Riddles?:

viewtopic.php?f=73&t=7563

Plenty on TLF for all.

[csearle]

Chris

Thanks no I have not yet established if it is live. As to the 'fuse box' . I have three installed about 20 years ago when the house was extended and they are of the 'trip' variety,. They do so on every excuse including when an old style incandescent lamp goes, leaving me incandescent because it often blows the fuse in the plug as well. I of course fix the bulb (usually with new style) and flick the switch on again, replacing the fuse in the plug if I need to. Does that make them officially rcd's?

I will report progress but I am getting close to asking my local electrician for help.

But I think I see what you mean. If I establish that the wire is live I could switch the rcds off one by one until one cuts the current. Then what?
(See how little I know about it?)

No, when the filament of an incandescent breaks any momentary magnetic field surrounding the wires supplying the current will collapse and induce a current in said wires. This in turn causes a voltage build-up at the break in the filament, which in turn causes an arc across the newly-formed gap. This arc has a low resistance and so the current through the filament-arc-filament combo is higher than without the arc. As the arc burns the filament back towards the supporting posts the total resistance plummets and the current rises rapidly (as does the light emitted). Ultimately at there is no filament left there is a short-circuit across the posts and your trip switch (called a mini circuit breaker, MCB) trips because of the over-current. This is why there is often a flash when they burn out.

If you have RCDs they will have test buttons on them. They detect leakage to Earth rather than over-current.

Well if the socket is live and you find out which MCB causes it to cease to be live you can find out what other points in the house/garage suddenly no longer work. The supply to your mystery-socket would likely come from one of them, from somewhere near them, or straight out of the fuseboard.

Chris

[AleisterCrowley]

Dod,
I've been pulled in to this thread as it reads like a detective novel.
Please persevere until the source and route of the mystery cable is resolved.

Colonel Mustard, in the Garden, with the Metal Detector...

It's as fascinating as a certain Fool's missing stopcock (an old TMF thread - we never did get to the bottom of it)

[csearle]

It's as fascinating as a certain Fool's missing stopcock...

Yes Dod's missing end could become the next Flight MH370.

[Itsallaguess]

It's as fascinating as a certain Fool's missing stopcock...

Yes Dod's missing end could become the next Flight MH370.

Heh. I'm wavering on the book-title now, between your 'Dod's missing end', or 'Dod's dead leg', but given that we don't quite know yet whether his leg is 'alive' or not, we may be being a little premature on the book-title front.

Of course, depending on where the story goes from here, a film adaptation may be a better route....

It's going to be the major story of the winter, that's for sure...

Itsallaguess

[Dod1010]

Thanks Chris. So an RCD is the switch I have on the inside of my wall when I got a three pin socket installed on the outside wall for garden tools and so on. It has a couple of switches/buttons to switch on/off said socket. Also the sort of thing one ought to use for an electric lawnmower I suppose.

This is all proving very educational thank you.

Dod

[csearle]

So an RCD is...

Examples of items incorporating the RCD function:

https://www.screwfix.com/p/mk-sentry-2- ... -rcd/86634
https://www.screwfix.com/p/bg-32a-singl ... /59513#_=p
https://www.screwfix.com/p/british-gene ... clad/4714p

Chris

[DrFfybes]

I assume also that, as this was or maybe still is, carrying 240 volts or thereabouts, it would have some sort of protection or warning underground. How deep would the cable be typically laid? I am guessing that it was installed maybe 20 years ago because that is when a big extension was done and the guy who removed the tree guessed it was about that age.
Dod

I would not make that assumption.

Our house was previously owned by a commercial electrical installer. Some of the connection I have found have been 'inventive' to say the least. I've found twin and earth inside garden hose, 3 core appliance cable wrapped in canvas, lighting cable run in the plaster protected by woodchip (found that with the wallpaper scraper), and spurs off spur off spurs.

Paul

[DrFfybes]

Just another thought - you might find it wired into the back of a socket in the house, possibly on the wall near the garden. The cable might come through one of the air bricks under the floor and then go under the path, or just be drilled through the wall below the outside ground level.

Take the socket face plates off and if there are 3 wires then one shouldn't be there.

Paul

[csearle]

Take the socket face plates off and if there are 3 wires then one shouldn't be there.

This could be open to misunderstanding, probably better to refer to the cables rather than the wires.

The number of cables might well help in Dod's the search.

The thing though (for those like the OP unfamiliar with this sort of stuff) is that a socket on a ring final circuit may, quite legitimately, supply one or more spurs, each off to a single point, and thus have three or more cables there.

Also, it may be a radial circuit, where there are no spurs, and there is no limit to the number of cables (except physically getting their wires into the terminals).

Regards,
Chris

[bungeejumper]

Our house was previously owned by a commercial electrical installer. Some of the connection I have found have been 'inventive' to say the least. I've found twin and earth inside garden hose, 3 core appliance cable wrapped in canvas, lighting cable run in the plaster protected by woodchip (found that with the wallpaper scraper), and spurs off spur off spurs.

True, very true. My wife's dad was an electrical installer, and presumably he thought he'd been given a free pass on the safety rules. When we were checking out his house for sale after he died, we found that the loft light had been wired directly to the immersion heater. With table lamp flex!

My first house, a terrace in Birmingham, had been 'inventively' renovated by an arch bodger who had turned the downstairs ring main into a horseshoe. He'd opened up a wall socket box and thought "oh goody, there are two wires to this socket. I'll take one of them off and run it to the outside wall light."

These days I wouldn't let my kids live in a house that I hadn't checked with one of these (or similar): https://www.screwfix.com/p/kewtech-kewc ... 0wodW2UOWw

BJ

[Dod101]

It took me a while to find this thread again, but I have very little to report except that I have established that the cable is 'dead' in that there is no electrical current surging through it. However I am still no nearer to discovering whether there is a live connection somewhere or indeed a switch which would allow the current to surge through the cable. Very confusing and unsatisfactory. The cable is still sticking out by my tree stump and I do not know what to do with it!

Dod