30 Jul 2017

And Then, A Problem...

You’re probably wondering where I’ve been the past few days. On the other hand, and more realistically, probably not.

Anyhoo, mid afternoon, four days ago, we found we had no electrickery. Neighbours had, we hadn’t. I dived into the cupboard... okay, crawled, and found the surge protection had tripped. After many attempts to reset with no joy, I threw the main breaker, reset the surge and hit the breaker – trip.

Wot to do? Throw the breaker, reset, pull a fuse, yup I still have the ol’ fuse wire fuses, breaker back – trip. Continue fuse pulling ‘till I’d found the bad boy. The fuse was fine so checked  to find wot bit o’ kit it was wot was faulty. Nothing. Just no action on the sockets with that fuse pulled. Lighting okay, plus a couple of sockets at the front end of the house. Everything else, dead.

That must mean there’s a fault in that particular circuit. That also excluded me from fiddling further as, if you get it wrong, it hurts pretty big.

I need an electrician, right? You know that Yellow Page phone directory thingy they push through your door every year, now seemingly replaced by a local Tradesman Directory? Yes, that one, the one we all put straight in the bin because, hay, we’ve got the Inter-Web now so we don’t need paper directories any more, right? Hay, wait just a lack-o’-lecy minute there. My new tip? keep one.

How did I find an amp-tramp? While slapping money on the mobile early doors down at the  corner shop run by that nice Pakanasty fellow, a young buck pulled up in a van; a van proclaiming he was a heating and gas gignerbeer. He’ll know an amp-tramp thought I so asked. Confusingly, he informed me he was a plasterer but, happy daze, he had an electricians number. Finally got hold of this electrician and, when two of ‘em arrived, later in the day, it took them four hours to isolate the problem on the circuit and fix it. Where was the problem? It was located at a J-box between a pair of sockets and the main board. And that J-box was cunningly concealed behind the wall tiles above the hob in the kitchen.

Choice was, don’t touch the tiles and lose four sockets or remove the tiles and keep ‘em. We elected for keeping the sockets guessing it’d probably result in a tiling job for me. Pardon? All I need to do is just buy replacements for any tiles that get damaged you say? You ever tried matching twelve plus year old tiles? No? Thought not.

They had to remove many tiles to find the bad boy but the boys done did good and no tiles were damaged during the groundwork for this post and the job resulted in me just having to glue those back up rather than a full kitchen rip down and new up.

The cost of two amp-tramps for four hours plus a bit o’ kit an’ cable? Ridiculously reasonable and way, way below my best guestimate. I now have them on speed dial.

So, for a few days we were living the Green dream and may I humbly suggest to any Green advocates or voters, please try this; throw your electrickery breaker and see how long you last before your weeping into your cold lentil soup.

Quote;  Dave Barry.

“We believe that electricity exists, because the electric company keeps sending us bills for it, but we cannot figure out how it travels inside wires.”

8 comments:

Ripper said...

At the risk of you coming back at me with a line from the Monty Python sketch with the Yorkshiremen, I was born and lived for the first 10 years of my life in my gran's old house which had no electricity supply. You were lucky - we had no lentil soup to cry into. So I know that I can live without electricity, but do I choose to? No.

Mac said...

Ripper,
We did survive our brief visit to the stone age. and it does give you pause for thought.
Think back; no television, fridge, freezer, microwave, double glazing, central heating, showers, baths?, no telephone, computers, record players and, damn! No Facebook! ...and countless other items we couldn’t even dream of. I wonder how many of those items we grew-up without are now ‘checked’ to determine peoples ‘living in poverty’ quotient today?
Imagine how many young folk wake, find their smartphone won’t work and go into total meltdown. Never mind having to live without any of the above.

Caratacus said...

I remember seeing Glen Campbell being interviewed by Parkie years ago, together with a very young Jeremy Lloyd. At one point, Parkie asked Glen about his rustic upbringing and Glen said, "Hell yeah ...I didn't see a toilet 'til I was six years old" at which point Jeremy leaned forward, his brow furrowed with concern, and said, "My dear chap you must have been simply bursting".

Mac said...

Caratacus,
Love it!
Very reminiscent of the very old one regarding the guy who visited a friend for the first time and asked to use the facilities. To his surprise, he was directed to a small wooden shed in the back yard.
Upon his return, he said to his friend, “Good heavens man!! There’s only a bucket in there!! And there’s no lock on the door!!”
The reply, should you have forgotten, was, “A lock? We’ve lived here for fifteen years and never had a bucket of s**t stolen.”

Caratacus said...

I suspect we could keep this going all night - but here's another :-)

A recently widowed elderly man was being consoled by the young vicar of the parish. "Can you tell me what happened?" "Aye, lad. She'd gone down t'garden to cut a cabbage for us tea ... and she just fell down dead between t'rows" "My dear fellow - what on earth did you do?" "I 'ad to open a tin o' peas instead".

Hardy folk in Yarksher tha knoos.

Mac said...

Caratacus,
...going all night? All year? Thought I, wot next? The answer was, of course, to type Yorkshire Humour into the browser and here’s a couple of the hundreds of results. Love the first one;

Mamma Mia: classic ABBA song or a Yorkshire kid telling his mum he's arrived?

A Yorkshire man goes to a goldsmiths and asks, "Can tha mek us a gold statue o' me whippet?"
The goldsmith says he can, then asks: "Do you want it 18 carat?"
The man replies, "Nay lad, chewin' a bone'll do fine."

Ripper said...

Mac - You are right, we didn't have any of those things, but we did have a bath. It was galvanised steel and kept in the outside toilet at the top of the yard.

Love the joke about the toilet, it had me in stitches. All the Yorkshire humour made me think of this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VLYpKGVBUg

Mac said...

Ripper,
I had many friends using such a bath. Water heated on the fire - if they were lucky.
I was lucky but I can still hear the old man squealing, at weekly bath time - if you needed one or not - as the emersion heater was switched on for an hour. Winter only of course...
Thank you very big for the link! He be getting posted this evening.