Is this legal?

[Jeremy Harris]

2 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

Went to double check how to test this correctly (I'd measure resistance but most links say voltage) and immediately found a lot of references where people got zero between live and earth or voltage between neutral and earth. It's a minefield! ?

 

A crude, but reasonably simple test is to isolate the power and just measure the resistance between the exposed metal case and the earth* conductor.  All the imported LEDs I tested had an open circuit when checked.  When I opened them up I found the earth wire just floating loose inside, having never been connected.

 

*I'm going to stick to using the term "earth" for both the conductor and connection from now on, rather than CPC or PE (Circuit Protective Conductor or Protective Earth)

[oldkettle]

1 minute ago, JSHarris said:

A crude, but reasonably simple test is to isolate the power and just measure the resistance between the exposed metal case and the earth* conductor.  

Had to check that "isolate the power" meant what I thought it did. Better safe. 

[Jeremy Harris]

11 minutes ago, oldkettle said:

Had to check that "isolate the power" meant what I thought it did. Better safe. 

 

The golden rule, never to be broken, is to turn off the power and then always check to make sure that the circuits you intend to work on are really dead.  It's not that unusual to find that things are wrongly wired, or mislabelled, so you can think the power is off when in reality it isn't, hence the need to always check (with a meter, rather than one of those supposedly voltage indicating things).

 

When measuring voltages on circuits that are disconnected it's not unusual to find that a meter shows a low voltage on the wires.  This is usually just an induced voltage from adjacent cables, and is really just a artefact from using a high impedance voltage measuring device.

 

Ideally, lock off the isolating switch whilst you're working, in case anyone comes along and turns the power back on, not realising you're working on it.  I have a small lock that fits over an isolator switch to prevent this.

 

 

[oldkettle]

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

I’ve started speccing these on any joints where there could be moisture 

 

Wiska Joint

This one is cheaper than the one I used. It seems to require separate connectors? The description says 

• Use with
  2 x 2-way (WA412) or
  1 x 5-way (WA415 )

Does it have enough space for 3 WA412? 

[PeterW]

It’s designed to hold pairs of other types of connector. Really useful for outdoor stuff and also with things such as connections for towel rail elements that whilst they are behind a panel, they are in a potentially humid environment. 

[Ed Davies]

But the common case is to want to make three connections (line, neutral and earth).

[oldkettle]

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

It’s designed to hold pairs of other types of connector.  

This is what confuses me. What about the earth? 2 x 2-way (WA412) means one for live and the other for neutral. 

 

Edit: just noticed @Ed Davies said the same thing. 

Edited June 16, 2019 by oldkettle

[Carrerahill]

On 15/06/2019 at 11:16, Onoff said:

 

Does nobody on here give a flying f*** about copyright?

 

Ripped off from the dodgy PDF is it?

Well... Not for the regs no, it is totally ridiculous that British regulatory material isn't free - if they want to write regs and have people adhere to them they ought to be available to all F.O.C. on a government website. I spend £1000's a year on subscriptions to places such as BSOL/BSI for access to British Sandards docs etc. and have paper copies in our office.

 

I don't know the source of the version I pasted above because I had it saved into a text file from a post from DIYnot when someone asked for details on cable routes. It's very handy to have those sections at the ready for the very situation that arose above.

 

Interestingly, British Law is available to all on a government site. 

Edited June 16, 2019 by Carrerahill
Adding info...

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, Carrerahill said:

I spend £1000's a year on subscriptions to places such as BSOL/BSI for access to British Sandards docs etc

Post them up for us, just like the EDXCEL exams.

 

[Carrerahill]

9 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Post them up for us, just like the EDXCEL exams.

 

We don't get a digital copy, it's all via a portal thing - it's fairly seamless but you must be connected to the internet for it to work. Once in you can view the full doc from a sort of digital menu - you cannot select or copy text from it - which is a pig when you want to quote reg's directly into reports or specs.

 

We ahem, did think, yes just think, about trying to make offline digital copies so that we could have the most commonly used stuff at our fingertips but you need to basically screenshot each page, save as a PDF then use a character recognition program to convert to usable text document you can copy and paste from. It took IT about 3 hours to make us up a 10 page PDF with some electrical and fire reg stuff which we use a lot! We decided our attempts were futile. The thing is, it is quite clear in our subscription that we may publish excerpts not exceeding something like 2 full consecutive sections and a max of 4 in a single report, document or set of documents constituting a package of information for the uses of reference, specification, arbitration etc. So I am within my subscription contract rights to for example copy the whole of section 411 (protection against shock) into a report on the suitability of a structure's grounding or something equally relevant. 

 

If I need to reference anything I just work from a paper copy about 98% of the time, I keep a paper copy of BS7176 and BS5839 in my laptop bag.

Edited June 16, 2019 by Carrerahill

[Ferdinand]

13 minutes ago, Carrerahill said:

We don't get a digital copy, it's all via a portal thing - it's fairly seamless but you must be connected to the internet for it to work. Once in you can view the full doc from a sort of digital menu - you cannot select or copy text from it - which is a pig when you want to quote reg's directly into reports or specs.

 

We ahem, did think, yes just think, about trying to make offline digital copies so that we could have the most commonly used stuff at our fingertips but you need to basically screenshot each page, save as a PDF then use a character recognition program to convert to usable text document you can copy and paste from. It took IT about 3 hours to make us up a 10 page PDF with some electrical and fire reg stuff which we use a lot! We decided our attempts were futile. The thing is, it is quite clear in our subscription that we may publish excerpts not exceeding something like 2 full consecutive sections and a max of 4 in a single report, document or set of documents constituting a package of information for the uses of reference, specification, arbitration etc. So I am within my subscription contract rights to for example copy the whole of section 411 (protection against shock) into a report on the suitability of a structure's grounding or something equally relevant. 

 

If I need to reference anything I just work from a paper copy about 98% of the time, I keep a paper copy of BS7176 and BS5839 in my laptop bag.

 

Can you potentially use something like Snagit to capture a scrolling screen grab?

 

 

[MJNewton]

1 hour ago, Carrerahill said:

We don't get a digital copy, it's all via a portal thing - it's fairly seamless but you must be connected to the internet for it to work.

 

It sounds like it must be a subscription-level thing as I've got access to BSOL (through work) and can download the standards as PDFs. They are, however, watermarked with my name and company before any one asks for a favour! 

[Carrerahill]

13 hours ago, MJNewton said:

 

It sounds like it must be a subscription-level thing as I've got access to BSOL (through work) and can download the standards as PDFs. They are, however, watermarked with my name and company before any one asks for a favour! 

Yeah, we used to have that, I think my 17th edition PDF is watermarked with my name. 

 

I can't remember the reason but the IT guy thought this was better as we got access to some thing we can use on our phones/tablets etc. but none of us use it. When it comes to renewal I will actually bother to sit down with him and see our options are later this year. 

[Carrerahill]

14 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

 

Can you potentially use something like Snagit to capture a scrolling screen grab?

 

 

Perhaps... but in all honesty it is not something really worth doing as I click on an icon, up comes a list by code or by standard name, click on that then I am in. 

[SteamyTea]

My local library used to get in any of the standards I wanted when I was researching. Not sure if they still do. May be worth asking there. They used to charge for photocopying, but at a reduced rate as I was a student. They never checked I was a student. I was in my 40s at the time.