I spent a large part of the weekend doing manly-type things. I installed light fixtures, filled in holes in walls, sanded filler until I was covered in a fine white sheen of dust, ran cabling through our walls and floorboards and did various other electrical and carpentry related DIY. As a result, I hurt.
The upside of this though is that my house is becoming safe. The people who wired it in the past were… creative. We found out, much to our surprise, that our electric shower was being fed by the lighting circuit. This meant that every time the previous owner took a shower – in a bathroom where none of the fixtures are earthed – she put the wiring under twice its rated load. Nice. Or, in other words, scary as hell. It’s a Very Good Thing that Will is going through the shopping list brought to our attention by the electrical survey. He’s doing really good work as well, so if you need an electrician, he’s your man (or, as he’s fond of saying, Where there’s a Will, there’s a way!)
The good news is that there’s not as much work as he originally anticipated. The bad news is that some of it will be more involved than expected and some of it has already proven to be annoying. In order to install the breaker box, we had to move the panel holding the main house breaker and the electric meter. This involved building a wooden frame to lower everything to give us the room we needed for the panel. This, in turn, involved me building an extension to the cabinet housing all the electrics. Wiring an earth bond for the bathroom involved snaking a cable from upstairs to downstairs. This involved 3 hours of swearing and finally drilling a rather big hole in the wall. Still, all the work will be more than worth the effort. You can’t beat the price as well – cost of the parts and a nice fish pie. I’ll be more than happy to pay it if it means my family is not living in a death trap.