Lazy-Ferret
23-01-2016, 20:37
I needed to get over to Suz's dads yesterday, to do some urgent electrical work in the garage. He has dementia, and is disabled (completely wheel chair bound), so he has carers going in 4 times a day, and among their duties, they do his laundry.
He had a combined washer dryer which is out in the garage, but when it failed at the tail end of last year, he purchased two new separate units to replace it. With the old machine, the carers put the washing on in the morning, then at lunch put it to tumble dry, then at tea, put a new load in the washing machine etc, but now with two separate machines, the carers put a washing load on in the morning, then at lunch swap the washed load to the tumble dryer, and put a second load into the washing machine. The problem is, the feed to the garage is fused at 13amp, so with 2 high current devices, it keeps blowing the supply fuse, and to make matters worse, he has to have puréed food, which we we order in bulk, and the extra is stored in a freezer in the garage as well.
The problem is, with the carers changing all the time, trying to train them is not working, and despite repeated notes to them that they can't use them at the same time, they still do, often blowing the fuse. The problem is, now, instead of calling us when they do it, they pretend not to notice for a few days, hoping that when we call over, I notice and fix it.
The problem is, being 40 odd miles away, we tend to only get over there every couple of weeks, unless we have a specific reason to go over sooner and because of this, we have had the freezer defrost where the power has been off for 4 days, and the last time we lost £170 of food....
Not only that, but he has an electric buggy, which is stored in the garage, and he always gets home, and plugs it in to charge. He does not look at any of the lights, as we did not want to confuse him with any extra things, when teaching him how to use it. So he did not realise it was not being charged, and went out several times on it over the week, resulting in him running out of battery on one of his trips, and stuck in the middle of nowhere... Luckily we have fitted a tracker to it and happened to actually have popped over to see him when this happened. We had to push him home for over a mile.
Anyway, enough back ground, the time had come to sort out the Power supply out there, and make it safe, and new....
I purchased all the bits I would need to run a better feed to the garage before hand, getting a few great deals from Ebay, then loaded them plus all the tools I would need into my car, ready to set off. I went to start my car and the MIL light stayed on... tried restarting it a couple of times, but it stayed on.. Popped into the house, got my laptop, connected up ECU talk, and discovered "34 Injector needle lift sensor - incorrect signal"
Bummer....
I really need to get over there and sort him out, so since it was unlikely to be a quick fix, I transferred all the bits I had loaded into the my car, over into Jiggly and went to start the car... Only to discover a Flat battery....
POUT...
I jumped Jiggly from my car, and finally set off...
At the top of our road, turned the indicators on, and it blew the fuse!!!!
Now some would take this as an omen that I was not supposed to go out, but not me, I drove back home, changed the fuse, checked the obvious, but found nothing, so packing a couple of extra fuses set off again...
Once there, I started by fitting a small consumer unit and then running the trunking and new wiring etc, leaving all the old stuff as it was for now.. I did hit a few snags, like not having enough trunking, and needing a spur feed for the pond pump, but luckily nothing major.
The old wiring consisted of a mains cable running from the house to a very old brown MK double socket. This socket then had a multitude of 4 gang sockets plugged into one outlet (ouch) and into the other socket was a normal 13 amp plug which had a length of 6amp twin core wire running from it through the wall to the outside toilet light...
Having got most of the new wiring done, and before I swap the feeds over, I just needed to fit a spur switch to join safely my new lighting circuit to the old toilet light wiring. I climb up the aluminium ladder, and holding on with one hand, lean over to grasp the plug, ready to pull it out the socket....
Suddenly, my hand flies back all of it's own, and the ladder launches away from the wall as I got a huge electric shock... Luckily, I did not come off the ladder, and apart from every bone in my body aching, I was OK.
Now, I know the wiring in this house is old, it was wired up back in the 70's by an electrician friend he knew. As Suz's dad knows nothing about electricity, he always got the electrician to do everything, and to be honest, I have in the past, met a couple of dodgy bits of wiring, but just pulling a plug out of a socket should not be a dodgy past time. On closer inspection, the fuse in the plug must of blown at some point in the long distant past, and instead of changing the fuse, someone had wrapped some fuse wire round the first fuse clip, then down to the second clip and wrapped it around that a few times as well, before putting the blown fuse back in to hold the wire in place!!!! To make matters worse, when they had put the cover back on, the two ends of the fuse wire had poked out the sides of the plug, between the top and bottom haves, right where you put your fingers as you grab a plug to pull it out.
I finished off, and got back home, but as the evening wore on, wow did I start to ache more and more... that was a pretty major electric shock...
So, to today.
I went out to check my car over, and found that my injector number 1 has a reading between 150 and 37 ohms, depending on if it is hot or cold. Looked to make sure there was no air in the fuel, and just for consistency, checked the MAF, but they are all ok, so looks like I now need to replace injector number 1... Not sure that was a better day than yesterday or not...:doh
He had a combined washer dryer which is out in the garage, but when it failed at the tail end of last year, he purchased two new separate units to replace it. With the old machine, the carers put the washing on in the morning, then at lunch put it to tumble dry, then at tea, put a new load in the washing machine etc, but now with two separate machines, the carers put a washing load on in the morning, then at lunch swap the washed load to the tumble dryer, and put a second load into the washing machine. The problem is, the feed to the garage is fused at 13amp, so with 2 high current devices, it keeps blowing the supply fuse, and to make matters worse, he has to have puréed food, which we we order in bulk, and the extra is stored in a freezer in the garage as well.
The problem is, with the carers changing all the time, trying to train them is not working, and despite repeated notes to them that they can't use them at the same time, they still do, often blowing the fuse. The problem is, now, instead of calling us when they do it, they pretend not to notice for a few days, hoping that when we call over, I notice and fix it.
The problem is, being 40 odd miles away, we tend to only get over there every couple of weeks, unless we have a specific reason to go over sooner and because of this, we have had the freezer defrost where the power has been off for 4 days, and the last time we lost £170 of food....
Not only that, but he has an electric buggy, which is stored in the garage, and he always gets home, and plugs it in to charge. He does not look at any of the lights, as we did not want to confuse him with any extra things, when teaching him how to use it. So he did not realise it was not being charged, and went out several times on it over the week, resulting in him running out of battery on one of his trips, and stuck in the middle of nowhere... Luckily we have fitted a tracker to it and happened to actually have popped over to see him when this happened. We had to push him home for over a mile.
Anyway, enough back ground, the time had come to sort out the Power supply out there, and make it safe, and new....
I purchased all the bits I would need to run a better feed to the garage before hand, getting a few great deals from Ebay, then loaded them plus all the tools I would need into my car, ready to set off. I went to start my car and the MIL light stayed on... tried restarting it a couple of times, but it stayed on.. Popped into the house, got my laptop, connected up ECU talk, and discovered "34 Injector needle lift sensor - incorrect signal"
Bummer....
I really need to get over there and sort him out, so since it was unlikely to be a quick fix, I transferred all the bits I had loaded into the my car, over into Jiggly and went to start the car... Only to discover a Flat battery....
POUT...
I jumped Jiggly from my car, and finally set off...
At the top of our road, turned the indicators on, and it blew the fuse!!!!
Now some would take this as an omen that I was not supposed to go out, but not me, I drove back home, changed the fuse, checked the obvious, but found nothing, so packing a couple of extra fuses set off again...
Once there, I started by fitting a small consumer unit and then running the trunking and new wiring etc, leaving all the old stuff as it was for now.. I did hit a few snags, like not having enough trunking, and needing a spur feed for the pond pump, but luckily nothing major.
The old wiring consisted of a mains cable running from the house to a very old brown MK double socket. This socket then had a multitude of 4 gang sockets plugged into one outlet (ouch) and into the other socket was a normal 13 amp plug which had a length of 6amp twin core wire running from it through the wall to the outside toilet light...
Having got most of the new wiring done, and before I swap the feeds over, I just needed to fit a spur switch to join safely my new lighting circuit to the old toilet light wiring. I climb up the aluminium ladder, and holding on with one hand, lean over to grasp the plug, ready to pull it out the socket....
Suddenly, my hand flies back all of it's own, and the ladder launches away from the wall as I got a huge electric shock... Luckily, I did not come off the ladder, and apart from every bone in my body aching, I was OK.
Now, I know the wiring in this house is old, it was wired up back in the 70's by an electrician friend he knew. As Suz's dad knows nothing about electricity, he always got the electrician to do everything, and to be honest, I have in the past, met a couple of dodgy bits of wiring, but just pulling a plug out of a socket should not be a dodgy past time. On closer inspection, the fuse in the plug must of blown at some point in the long distant past, and instead of changing the fuse, someone had wrapped some fuse wire round the first fuse clip, then down to the second clip and wrapped it around that a few times as well, before putting the blown fuse back in to hold the wire in place!!!! To make matters worse, when they had put the cover back on, the two ends of the fuse wire had poked out the sides of the plug, between the top and bottom haves, right where you put your fingers as you grab a plug to pull it out.
I finished off, and got back home, but as the evening wore on, wow did I start to ache more and more... that was a pretty major electric shock...
So, to today.
I went out to check my car over, and found that my injector number 1 has a reading between 150 and 37 ohms, depending on if it is hot or cold. Looked to make sure there was no air in the fuel, and just for consistency, checked the MAF, but they are all ok, so looks like I now need to replace injector number 1... Not sure that was a better day than yesterday or not...:doh