Neutralising link not present.

youtube!

Hi,

a neighbour of mine has asked me to look at a house she has rented out to a new tenant.

The issue seems to be that when the ESB last read the meter (indoors along with FB) They spotted that the neutralising link was not present or disconnected,as I have not looked at it yet I am not sure what is actually happening.

She showed me however a letter from the ESB that requires a registered contractor (i am a spark but not a contractor) to re-connect.

I am just wondering why there would be no link,it is an old enough house (50 yrs) but it is in a housing estate so I would imagine it is a TCNS set up and so there would have to be a link from the main incoming neutral to the customers earth.

Now I know I havent looked at it yet,but I cant help feeling that perhaps there may have been a fault somewhere in the house and perhaps some cowboy decided to deliberately dis-connect the link to clear it.

Also I find it strange that it would be only picked up recently because the ESB read the meter every few months presumably. So I reckon it was done recently.

Anyway I am going to look at it tomorrow but if anyone has evr come across such a thing maybe they can give me an input.

meercat

youtube! wrote: »

Anyway I am going to look at it tomorrow but if anyone has evr come across such a thing maybe they can give me an input.

i have come across this regular enough
mostly when i am called for a rewire
some installations may have a 2.5 earth neural link from the meter into the fusebox which may be hard to spot

you may require a cert to connect new 10square earth to neutral link though

possibly no earth rod either
time for a rewire??

post pics if you can

2011

youtube! wrote: »

Hi,
The issue seems to be that when the ESB last read the meter (indoors along with FB)

Indoor meter indicates that the chances are this is an old installation.

They spotted that the neutralising link was not present or disconnected,as I have not looked at it yet I am not sure what is actually happening.

Back in "the good old days" all there was even less control over what was done. I have seen houses with 4 sq. mm tails and no earthing.

I am just wondering why there would be no link,it is an old enough house (50 yrs) but it is in a housing estate so I would imagine it is a TCNS set up and so there would have to be a link from the main incoming neutral to the customers earth.

Not everything is done properly. I would think this is not a TT installation.

Now I know I havent looked at it yet,but I cant help feeling that perhaps there may have been a fault somewhere in the house and perhaps some cowboy decided to deliberately dis-connect the link to clear it.

God only knows!

Also I find it strange that it would be only picked up recently because the ESB read the meter every few months presumably. So I reckon it was done recently.

Not strange at all. Meter readers are generally not electricians and I would expect that they have little or no electrical training.

meercat

youtube! wrote: »

Also I find it strange that it would be only picked up recently because the ESB read the meter every few months presumably. So I reckon it was done recently.

.

perhaps they are trying to source work for esbn now
i doubt they are busy at the minute

youtube!

Thanks for the repiles guys, I guess I will just put a 10 square earth in for now and see what happens, I am kinda expecting there could be tripping though when I do so I will bring some test meters too and do a loop test at least.
The house was apparently re-wired 10 yrs ago, who knows to what standard though.
Another point I was thinking about is that there are new tenants in so I wonder if they could have had a combined meter-isolator set up installed and this maybe was when it was picked up? 9just speculating here)

I am a little bit wary that as I am not a registered contractor that I shoudnt even be looking at it but she is a neighbour and I was gonna do it more as a favour really. If I do the neccessary testing and bring it up to standard will that be good enough for the ESB do you think?

M cebee

i wouldn stick in a link
Unless you're doing more work

meercat

M cebee wrote: »

i wouldn stick in a link
Unless you're doing more work

better to have it than not have it though

.G.

meercat wrote: »

i have come across this regular enough
mostly when i am called for a rewire
some installations may have a 2.5 earth neural link from the meter into the fusebox which may be hard to spot

you may require a cert to connect new 10square earth to neutral link though

possibly no earth rod either
time for a rewire??

post pics if you can

Seen this myself recently when we re-wired a house

Old neutralising was simply a 2.5 earth in with the neutral at the meter but it wasn't very visible as it ran behind the wooden board all this was mounted on.

When we re-wired we provided 10sq earth and the ESB connected this to the neutral when they came out to connect the new tails.

youtube!

superg wrote: »

meercat wrote: »

i have come across this regular enough
mostly when i am called for a rewire
some installations may have a 2.5 earth neural link from the meter into the fusebox which may be hard to spot

you may require a cert to connect new 10square earth to neutral link though

possibly no earth rod either
time for a rewire??

post pics if you can

Seen this myself recently when we re-wired a house

Old neutralising was simply a 2.5 earth in with the neutral at the meter but it wasn't very visible as it ran behind the wooden board all this was mounted on.

When we re-wired we provided 10sq earth and the ESB connected this to the neutral when they came out to connect the new tails.

Ok guys so I have just finished at the house and this is what I found.

The customer told me that after they each had taken a shower (t 90) well after the third one there was a strange smell so she called the esb to investigate, they came out and changed the cutout to a new one and it was then when they spotted no link had been previously connected.

I did a loop test before I inserted the link and found everything I tested was over range, I think the esb changed their main fuse down to a 40 amp to compensate from what I could understand from the lady in the house she was foreign so I could have picked her up wrong but that's what it seemed.

Anyway I stuck in a 10sq and did the loop tests again and everything was well within range at that point.

One other thing I did notice was that the supply from the meter to the customers mains was only 6s !! Because of the seal on the meter I didn't want to touch it though.

I checked out their consumer unit and all the connection were fine so I don't know where she got the smell from.

I haven't done insulation tests though.

What is the next move ? I would like to change the tails but I would have to buy a cert from reci or eccsa to do that although maybe the link has sorted out the issue but I am not sure.

What do you think ?

meercat

Possibly the Esb cutout was the burning smell so that resolved that issue
I would advise upgrading tails alright
This would mean 16s from the board to the meter
A cert will have to be issued and Esb should then upgrade their side
There is an Esb charge for this too

Possibly upgrade consumer unit and earth rod/bonding at same time

Make sure shower is rcd protected

Can't imagine Esb replaced fuse for 40amp knowing an instant shower was operational
Perhaps lost in translation explaining the load off the shower to the tennant