-
Have recently had not far off that experience with a family house. Some of the work that had been done in the last 20 years was OK, some not ideal but not dangerous. Then we got into the older stuff installed through 80-90's by various men with van types. Truley mind bendingly bad. Like they must been on a laugh on just how badly they could install something and still get paid for it.
My personal fav is always securing a T+E cable to any object by just screwing through the centre of it, nailing the earth to the object, and precision stripping both the conductors insulation just so that it won't be shorting right now. But once someone else comes along and unscrews something inside the floor they get a nice shock (screws that were put in at the time, not subsequent blind screwing into floors, i.e. deliberate).
BrickMan-
Then we got into the older stuff installed through 80-90's by various men with van types.
This was a bad time for construction. The industry was moving away from traditional materials and techniques to modern stuff while simultaneously learning to cope with the fact that a man from the council wouldn't be dropping round regularly to make sure you're doing the job right. Lots of stuff was got very wrong and often with the best intentions.
Bobbo
New update from hell:
Sparx was in today for the first time. After a couple of hours he came to find me looking as white as a sheet. Unsurprisingly the whole house needs re-wiring. Everything is labelled in polish (even the switches on consumer unit) in illegible hand-writing. There are no RCDs in the consumer unit. There are about 30 times more junction boxes than needed and they are randomly dotted around the house each junction box is crammed with wagos. Perhaps the biggest surprise the sparx found though was that every time a cable terminated the last 4 inches of each wire was stripped and coloured sleeves were added; red to neutral, black to live and solid green to earth.
The Sparx is of the opinion that whoever did the wiring was actively trying to kill someone.
Oh and the landscape gardeners took one look at the roof and ran. As did the three other roofing firms that subsequently turned up to quote for the job. Not sure how to proceed with that one.