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Forum Index : Electronics : we are amateurs, by law we MUST leave it to the trained professionals
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poida
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Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418
Posted: 08:52am 31 Aug 2024
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loyUVB7zKhwwronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers
Cpoc Regular Member
Joined: 28/05/2024 Location: PortugalPosts: 78
Posted: 09:35am 31 Aug 2024
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If you don’t know what you are doing then don’t touch because it just may kill you. That setup was very dangerous. Reversing neutrals are not to be played with.
KeepIS
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Joined: 13/10/2014 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1679
Posted: 06:04am 01 Sep 2024
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And a trained professional left it in this dangerous state, this will get worse and in a very short time for most trades. I hope I'm wrong, now what was that song, ah yes, "The writings on the Wall" It's all too hard. Mike.
Murphy's friend
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Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 648
Posted: 10:44am 01 Sep 2024
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They must do things different in the UK. Why is there apparently no connection between the neutral and earth bus bars? If there was (as it's done in Australia) then surely a big fuse would blow somewhere up the supply line.
Am I missing something?
phil99
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Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2131
Posted: 12:26pm 01 Sep 2024
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This months Silicon Chip has an article on mains earthing systems.
There are a number of different systems around the world, but I think our MEN system is one of the best.
mab1 Senior Member
Joined: 10/02/2015 Location: United KingdomPosts: 209
Posted: 03:45pm 01 Sep 2024
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Yes, in the UK the N-E bond is on the network operators side of the meter. Depending on the supply earthing arrangement it would either be in the header fuse to the left of the meter (tncs /pme (combined neutral earth)) or at the network operarors earth point(tn-s (separate earth conductor) or tt (earth rod at the house and no earth conductor to the transformer)).
Unfortunately the energy suppliers don't want to pay fully qualified professionals to swap meters so they train their 'engineers' with the bare minimum knowledge needed to swap a meter and test by rote.
poida
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Joined: 02/02/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1418
Posted: 12:19am 02 Sep 2024
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Mab, this sounds about right.wronger than a phone book full of wrong phone numbers
Grogster
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Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9303
Posted: 12:23am 02 Sep 2024
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Pretty scary video, but interesting.
We had a similar kind of thing on a company scale over here in NZ a few years ago. The copper network company(won't mention names - NZ people probably know who I mean), who maintain all the phone exchanges, basically sacked all the NZ guys who knew what they were doing, so they could hire immigrant labour and pay them only minimum wage.
These immigrants got given a two-week crash-course in how to do phone connections, and then they were let loose on the exchanges. The number of faults that then spewed forth from this, was amazing - and infuriating.
You'd get phone lines disconnected without notice(that happened A-LOT), numbers changed without notice(they'd transpose a pair, connecting two phone numbers to the wrong addresses), doubled-up lines(two lines connected together), broadband disconnections.....the list goes on. All cos they replaced the guys that knew what they were doing, so they could pay immigrants minimum-wage, whereas with the NZ guys, they had to pay them trade-rate by law. And cos the crash-course for the immigrants seemed not to instill the fact that all changes needed to be checked and confirmed, they just went in, made changes and left WITHOUT checking they did it right, and.....
When I did my training, we had it hammered into us that you NEVER, EVER disconnect someone's service without authority, and if you HAVE to for some reason, you make sure you put it back on again ASAP...and CHECK that the service is working on that pair again - simple use of a test phone you plug into the pair, and check the number is indeed the number that it should be.
I DON'T BLAME THE IMMIGRINTS - to them, it was just a job, but the copper network company really buggered things up with that move, and I and other people had to waste HUNDREDS OF HOURS on help-lines to get problems sorted that should never have been problems in the first place. Problems that simply would never have happened with the NZ guys, cos they were correctly trained and had the knowledge!
Not long after that, the copper network company started rolling out fiber, so many of the problems sorted themselves as people got moved off the copper anyway, but what an utter disaster that was, all caused by bloody bean-counters at the company in question.Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!