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Last month (when I was on holiday 8) ) apparently there was a storm that caused more heavy rain, high winds and a few reported power surges in some parts of west Berkshire. Well this chap that lives out in the sticks just outside Reading was the victim of an enormous power surge that blew every electrical gadget in his house! 😯
Southern Electric admitted liability and their engineers spent a lot of time rewiring power lines, digging up his garden and putting in a complete new system. New everything including wall sockets and light fittings and consumer unit. Not only that but his fridge, washing machine, dryer, TV, video, Sky Box etc etc etc had all blown up. 🙁
They refused to pay for replacement appliances however unless local companies could say each appliance was BER they had all to be repaired at the expense of Southern Electric and Transco. I was called in to fix the Hoover PE235 W/Machine, the Neff S5443 D/washer and Neff B1441 Oven. All appliances had to have new modules, stepper motor (w/m)and on/off switches. The oven a new clock and selector switches and d/w module and mains filter. A nice mornings work for me today and a massive bill for Transo of over £1,000. 😀
Southern Electric/Transco however insisted that the customer paid up first and claimed it back off them? Very odd but hey! I got paid up front, stuffed all the burnt out bits into a big cardboard box for them to inspect the parts fitted. Job done! 😉
Chatting away to my customer with a cuppa, like you do, and apparently the engineers recon the power surge was over 1800 VOLTS????? And they have got 2 months work repairing a major section of the overhead wire in a field nearby. (I took this picture on my way from the farmhouse)
Re: Power surge chaos!
Back in the early 70s when I was a T.V engineer I was called to a council block in London that had been connected to the 11,000 volt supply by the electricity board engineers, after a mix up with the cables in the substation, they were connecting a new block with power when the mix up happened, there was not a single bulb or fitting left intact by the blast.
Everything pluged in was damaged as the high voltage jumped the switches, the T.V I went to check was just a black burnt mess, not a single component inside was left working the mains lead had melted, and the tube had cracked, I have never seen anything like it, cost the local electricity board a fortune to rewire and replace everything, it was a block of 18 flats, bloody luck nobody was killed.Re: Power surge chaos!
went to 2 like this in Nottingham:
No1. Called to look at all white goods in a house (brown goods guy came at same time to look at brown goods). They explained the family was had been away, came back and sent their sone up staird to clean his teach to go to bed….. mummy the water is burning me… turns out water was live!!!. To cut a long story short. short in cabling outside their house……did all the expected damage to modules etc and killed all TVs and microwave.. son needed hospital tratmentbut lived.
No2. Called to a regular customer to find her not there but her sister. Her sister explained that her sister had tried to turn the kitchen tap on and got electric shock but muscles made her keep hold of the tap. ~Don’t the final out come but she was very seriously ill. Fault….QUALIFIED Corgi gas enginer has installed new gas boiler shortly before…gave them gas safety certificate…no problems…he just kind of forgot about the continuity earth bonding……!!!!
Steve
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