Our Non-electrical year!

[doug]

Just reminiscing over our electrical problems this year. My wife is disabled, due to MS, consequently we have a few aids to help her try to lead a reasonable life. So far this year we've had the following. electric garage door misbehaving to the point where I could only open it manually and as it's a double door there was no way she could have managed if I was incapacitated. We have an automatic car which she can drive using her left leg on the additional left pedal. This door was out of warranty and each visit by an engineer was a minimum £40 call-out charge plus the cost of replacement parts. After spending #£400 I agve up and forked out and extra £450 for a replacement German mechanism which now works reliably.

We were on holiday in France earlier this year when we got a text message that our freezer had gone off and had tripped the mains Consumer unit. On return ha to restock part of the freezer - wasn't worth claiming on house insurance. Checked out the freezer and couldn't find any fault, only replaced it last year and it was out of warranty. Then we started to get more and more frequent cut-outs of the Consumer unit. Started to tear my hair out as I just couldn't find any pattern to pinpoint any particular appliance at fault. Even completely re-wired the garage - it had grown like Topsy over the years we have lived here because I had been adding extensions over the year and, of late, had added additional extensions for the chargers for Anne's disabled buggies. Anyway eventually had the Consumer unit replaced. This was only 10 years old and couldn't get a replacement RCD trip as the unit was no longer made - mind they should last for ever. But since then no problem with that.

Now progressively over the last few months we have been experiencing flickering lights the periods of stability. Had put this down to faults with the supply. The thought that it may been down to that Consumer unit. This weekend we had some major power surges. Was worried about blowing my PC. Rang power supply people Monday am and they finished up replacing the connection link where the overhead aluminium supply cable was joined to the copper cable running into the house. It was only a compression joint in a plastic tube. Completely burnt and blackened. The line engineer did a quick replacement. Another compression joint well sealed with insulation tape! Impressed with the safety technique used - he did use a wooden ladder (and it was raining) and he didn't isolate the supply!

And now to date - We had to have a stair lift installed ( at our own expense no assistance from the council they took the attitude that Anne could sleep downstairs as we could modify a room for her to sleep in - I won't bore you with the details). Anyway, last week we renewed the service contract on the lift and an engineer gave it a complete check over on Tuesday and left in it's lower charging position at the first bend on the stairs. When we went to bed I brought it down for Anne and went up to get changed. Anne called out to say it wouldn't work. Went back down and checked everything and it was Kaput. So she had to struggle up without it. Another engineer came out yesterday afternoon and couldn't sort the problem. He left last night say that he would have to arrange for a replacement motor/carriage assembly as inspite of many telephone calls to all the other service engineers they couldn't diagnose the fault other than "it wont work." Crossing fingers that they can get a replacement unit today.

So I'm sitting here - couldn't sleep wondering "what next." You know it's not cheap being disabled, there is a lot of assistance available toward the cost of things but it still costs more that being "normal." It's not me but the Missus. We are not destitute but have been able to do a lot for ourselves. Perhaps the Gods have decided that this year is our turn to see how dependent we are on all these modern aids to make our lives a little easier.

[andsome]

Sorry to hear about your woes, but have you thought about selling up and finding a nice cave somewhere? :D

[doug]

Good thought. Would have to be on the ground floor though!

[catgate]

Those RDC devices are a pain. I recently had quite a performance with ours and it took quite a long time to sort out (hopefully).

It started tripping out, for no apparent reason (as they do), and after several of these occurences I traced the problem to my garage/workshop sub circuit. In there I have another distribution board with separate circuits and trips for lights, 2 power circuits, compressor circuit and lathe circuit (a Colchester Triumph). Over the course of several weeks I eventually eliminated everything apart from the lathe circuit, by the simple but lengthy expedient of pulling out all the trips and replacing them one at a time.

The cable for the lathe goes into the lathe switch box where there are two contactors. One for the three horse lathe motor and the other to drive the coolant pump (a three phase, quarter horse, pump that I use in conjunction with a couple of condensers to "make" a "third phase"). A further feed is taken from the input cable to an anglepois lamp, with a built in switch, that I have mounted above the chuck area.

So I replaced the lathe trip and after a couple of days we had had two trip outs.....but the motor switch, which is also the master switch. was OFF !

So I was left with trying to find somewhere where the Neutral cable was contacting the Earth.

Working on the pricipal that the failure of a filament bulb very often causes a trip out I removed the bulb, despite its being a satisfactory working model.

End of trip outs. I replaced it.... return of trip outs. I examined the switch in the lamp and could find no fault. So I put in a new bulb.......still no trip outs since mid summer.