Aircon Wiring Install FAIL- TWICE! 

And can we talk about the cables being just thrown across the loft? It's hot garbage all the way through.

No such thing as a consumer equipment zone on the metering panel anymore (for endeavour and ausgrid areas anyway) I agree that it should be on a seperate circuit (may void warranty on AC if on a shared circuit) and it looks a bit rough with the hole pumped full of silicone, they couldve put a shroud or trunking over the hole or something jbox rough as

I agree wholeheartedly about everything you said. except the consumer's equipment zone got taken out a few years ago, and it doesn't need fireproof foam as it is a house not a multi dwelling, but really could have been done alot better than the "do your best, silicone the rest"

Yep agree, theres a dotted line for morons......it means keep out of the grid providers equipment zone :)

good enough for straya! 👍

Yes! Something that I just gets me every time. They are super picky about electricity and safety. Yet the fuse/switch/breaker board is always a complete mess. Often poorly labeled, bare wires. Preventing is better than curing?

@@WacKEDmaN bloody rippa

time for a complete board upgrade instead of bodging new stuff into that 80's installation

its australia. in autrrria un thinkeable

in south australia a din enclosure is the norm

Bless the din rail

My American eyes cried a little.

So did Canada

The wiring behind the panel even more so! It's fascinating how different the norms especially in terms of electrical installations are even in countries with roughly the same level of economic wealth. Where I live, you'd most likely end up in jail for installing or owning an electrical box like that.

The fact that it's outside is a bit screwy to me (in the US) as well. The electrical panels here are almost always indoors.

@@FnordOok Except for California, panels are generally outside there.

yep depending on the age of the house that board might be asbestos

@@FnordOok in the UK they have to be indoors too, With our climate it would corrode away within months, any outdoors mains must be IP67 and protected with RCD.

The panel looks like some of the old 1930's machines at work bakalite hinged panels pain in the arse to work on.

Typical Jimbos job lol

Unfortunately the retailer sellers of installation for $200 passed on to a cowboy subcontractor , quite literally a 4hr install, how can the pipes even get pressure tested an vac’ed properly?

"Let me check the regs to see if I can get away with this"

@@itemushmush the guys who do this often aren’t sparkles and wouldn’t know the regs from a bunch of flowers

@@Spookieham So true. I installed two of those junction boxes in my ceiling a few years ago for a couple of exhaust fans. Common sense told me to fix the boxes to the beams and conceal all wiring. I think it’s more about pride of workmanship. Considering they would be doing this daily and have all the appropriate tools, it would take very little extra time to ensure a neater and safer install.

It’s bad even by Australian standards - the whole board needs to be binned and a new one installed.

Yeah, most retrofits here in AU look pretty fucking ugly. I had my garage rewired the "right" way (separate DB, individual RCBOs per circuit, etc.) so it now has better power distribution than the house, had planned to do the same in the house but we decided to sell.

Ik viel bijna van m'n stoel LOL..

East or West Euro style :D That fuse box looks exactly like the one my grandfather had installed in his house 50 years ago :)

Yes this is the insane thing. Can't even run data cable, but "qualified" people can leave exposed mains wires dangling in the breeze.

That sounds like the comment from someone with no pride in their work!

Depends on the homeowner, my dad did the wiring for the bathroom a couple of decades or so back and when we had to replace the outlet/switch I found out he never installed the ground to it and just left it floating... Fucking hell.

@@vgamesx1 is your dad a professional electrician? They are the worst at home.

@@JJVernig Haha, thankfully he isn't nor has he done any electrical work since then, although that doesn't necessarily mean the rest of the house is well done or up to modern standards.

Thats why my family and I only use one company who used to do the wiring at my old work place. They do a damned good job. You pay but its well worth it.

that panel is earlier than the 80's, the din rail come in the early 70's I was wiring them back then.

DIN rail is still nowhere near good enough for a home install. DIN rail is for industrial use. Why do you not use proper enclosed panels that have much higher safety standards? I've seen newer DIN rail installs. The quality of them is still sketchy. They can be a LOT less sketchy than the old setup Dave just showed, but compared to what we use in the US, there's no comparison. A box should have a cutout that is the exact size of each breaker that goes in, it should hide the wiring, the wiring should not flex AT ALL when you open the panel, etc. Just so many problems that DIN rails bring. There's honestly no reason to be using DIN rails at home. "But it allows for differently sized breakers" is the only counter claim I can think of, but is that REALLY a benefit? I definitely don't want a mishmash of random breakers in my box. If there are other reasons, I'd be interested to hear them, but I took a pretty good think about it before deciding that there is probably only that one "benefit" I'm not normally the type of person who cheers for team USA or anything (countries don't mean much to me in general) but man, it feels like the US is the only country that has gotten this (somewhat) right.

Yeah I live in a public housing unit and they ensure tenants have safe facilities. When I moved in back in 2005, I still had a "consumer unit" like Daves, then a letter came, and a bit later a sparky, and about an hour and a half later I had a nice flashy new consumer unit box din rail jobbie complete with RCD's and new circuit breakers. My ups didn't even have a chance to run out of juice while he worked :) Yes as soon as he was gone, I carefully opened the box and he did a top notch job with the wiring. :P

It occurs to me that you should probably ask that for an electrical work being done on your home. Your insurance company and electrical inspector are likely to be much happier with that. (I once owned a home that had bad wiring in it from the original owner's basement reno. I was NOT pleased when trying to shove something onto a shelf in the utility room pushed an exposed live wire into one of my copper water pipes and blew a hole in it. I damn well could have been killed! This led me to formulate this statement: "Bad plumbing is annoying. Bad wiring WILL KILL YOU.")

All I read was "Angry Pixie pool party"

@@Fridelain Pixies really don't like getting wet, and are likely to take it out on you...

They don't, at least in my country. We had work done when we moved in a new office by a so called "professional electricians" and it was all certificated, and it was garbage. We had to fix basically everything, most of the earths weren't connected, terminals screwed loose, cabled of wrong colour used (even green/yellow for a phase conductor...), network cables not terminated correctly, and so on. They don't care. They give you even a piece of paper that is required by the law that says that everything they done is certified, well then if there are problems you can sue them, and you have to prove in some way that the fault is the result of their shitty work, something that you really can't do.

The thin headphone wire that I franklishtained from two broken head phones is a better job

@@mistakenotou7681 yep, along with 3.5mm to RCA adapters

How do you know if they did not adjust gas pressures accordingly?

@@pulporock Do you honestly believe they didn’t just crack those valves, hit the on button and got the f out of there on to the next one? Probably just as likely as them having a vacustat haha

@@pulporock These systems don't work like that, and anything they modify to allow for that would also void warranty. They would need to change the metering device to allow for less gas, the metering device is a fixed orifice, which relies on the expected pressure on both sides. Which voids warranty and would cost many hundreds, and be guess work. Or they would need to make a larger receiver. Which would void warranty, cost hundreds, and also be guess work. The unit is pre-charged with enough gas to operate between 3 and 20 meters of pipe (check the specs, maybe 19 or 21). They will provide a formula to calculate extra gas per meter of pipe (add each elbow as a meter also in most cases). This is as logic, more pipe means more space to fill, to get the correct back pressure (wrong terminology, but your return pressure must be around 125psi/800kpa to keep the compressor cool), which leads into the compressor needs 3 meters of return pipe to allow for further expansion, as the return gas must be cooled further to cool the compressor. If you remove gas, you mess with the entropy chart, effectively rendering the unit no longer an a/c. What you most probably are misunderstanding, when Dave shows the Indoor and the Outdoor unit, that isn't the true indoor and outdoor unit in a refrigeration sense. half of the components from the indoor unit are situated in the outdoor unit. To explain, to make this a true indoor and outdoor unit, like say a larger ducted system with a tx in the head, or a cold room or blast chiller. You would need to cut the fixed orifice out of the 'out door' unit, modify it to work without the 3 meters of pipe that allows the liquid to start expanding (very important for these small units, as it allows the liquid to expand properly when flooding the evap, otherwise it simply hasn't enough time to expand properly). You would also need to add the extra pipe before the receiver, and pipe from the reversing valve (or condenser for cooling only models). I'm assuming you came up with this theory from making the beer cooler prac at tech, which means you remember the teacher waffling on about the entropy chart, which means you know anything they modify to this system means it wont work properly. In any case, IF they did something to compensate for their poor work, they voided warranty. once again, THEY VOIDED WARRANTY no matter what they think they did, although I near guarantee they did nothing.

@@Combat.Wombat.official Thanks for the information; I have no doubt they did not touch the refrigerant, but thought that could be a possibility. I work on new homes (nothing to do with A/C) and have seen many techs, getting the vac pump out and adding some (maybe removing) refrigerant to the heat pumps, more so of years past. Usually much bigger units than this one. All interesting.

@@pulporock Anyone who doesn't use a vac pump needs to be removed from site and reported. That removes oxygen and moisture which will mix with any refrigerant and cause a mild form of acid, that will eat the compressor out from the inside, any warranty for a compressor the first step is test for oxygen in the gas and that will void warranty. Some very bad installers just 'Purge' the system instead of vacuum pump, they think it works but it just pushes most of the oxygen out, they have no idea about fluid dynamics/turbulence/gravity, and also is just dumping CFC gas into the atmosphere, which I joke is plugging the whole in the ozone layer, but it's a fairly bad offender for the atmosphere. If someone is doing a cold room or some type of refrigeration system they build themselves or had designed for a specific purpose, they typically don't have warranty anyway to any real extent. And if they don't have a reciever (basically a holding tank for extra gas) they will add refrigerant bit by bit, called 'chasing the frost line' in which case they are basically putting in just enough gas for the system + pipes for be filled to the correct density (it's never 100% liquid or 100% gas). They will face huge problems when the ambient temp changes, because the system will very quickly be low on gas and overheat the compressor, or have way to much gas and lock the compressor. Any factory system like an Australian (and most of the worlds) split/package/window/whatever unit is designed down to the T, with all the I's dotted. Any modification will void warranty, basically no questions asked. Times gas will be added - often, any leak will need gas replaced, any extra pipe length above the max pipe distance, or in special cases where old pipes are used and the pipes are oversized (most brands cover warranty for pipes within one imperial size larger or smaller, but double check. Also R22 rated pipes from say before 2005ish aren't rated for R410a or R32 gas, there is an expensive workaround using an over sized system and having the manufacture de-rate it's power) Times gas will be removed. When ALL of the gas is needed to be removed for repair or uninstall and dumping (Most of use remove the gas from the pipes, then remove the gas from the 10 units at the office in one go later on). So if there is a leak or a new part needs to be welded in. If it's a cocktail gas (R410a) then any leak 'should have ALL gas removed and fresh gas installed, because only the heavier gas will leak if the hole is on the bottom, or lighter from the top, but IDK anyone that ever actually does that with R410a, as the replacement for R410a is R32, which is made from half of R410a essentially, and I've never had or heard of an issue from not doing a full replacement. So all in all, gas in a split ac should never be removed until the unit is ready for the bin. Or rare times for repair and ALL the gas is put back in. It simply isn't a choice us installers are able to make. Hot water/Solar heat pumps 'could' be slightly different, I don't work on them, but to the best of my knowledge they are also very gas dependent the same as a split AC.

She'll be right..

Amazing. What a mess.

Na, that’s an old board that’s been hacked into though the years. Modern would be din rail and a common bus bar.

@@MrSmeagolsGhost yeah, but we also have buckets of cheap plastic DIN units, just waiting to burn

Hi, that looks like what mine was until 2020, house was built in @ 1960, add on extension in @1980 and again @1997 I notice he has one original federal or clipsal ceramic wire fuse holder as well, i had 4 left power , right power, rear extension #1power, and finally all lights The 1997 extension received the push button resetable style fuses I had a earth leakage detector added. Since the upgrade last year, i now have hmm 10 or 12 drops, each circuit has its own combo fuse and earth leakage detector I have 2 air cons, front and rear of house, and each has its own 15amp line with only the aircon on it. Front aircon is a mitsubishi from @ 1982 and still chills good, the rear one was a LG installed 1995, then replaced with a cheap no name brand from bunnings ( Australias home depot ) in 2010 and i replaced it last year with another mitsubishi Davis wiring appears messy due to fuses all over the board plus his solar, and he still has the old meter, mine was mandatory replaced Oct-Nov 2020 with "Smart Meter" Regards George

@@georgemaragos2378 I also had ... 20 years ago or so ... a summer house with old wiring, and a bunch of ceramic fuses (which TBH scare the crap out of me, you know because of exposed life connections and no fuse to protect) ... and those were also from the 70s or so ... but still on a rail.

might draw up to 9 amps if on heating (the ice breaker heater thingo on outdoor unit.)

It's the same in Australia, although you can mount it where ever

Only cheap poorly made for way undersized condensers make noise. The good high-end condensers are near silent you could be mounted right outside your bedroom window and you would not hear it. Everybody’s always buying the smallest cheapest one they could get. Then when they get really maxed out on the hottest days they’re running at 110% their capacity whining to piss out of their motor and fan making annoying noise that bothers people. This is due to poor selection.

Not true. Would like to see the relevant AS 3000:2007 clause referenced. As per clause 4.19 you just need to provide a lockable local isolator. Not a "dedicated circuit breaker".

@@pasan. It's in every split system install manual, MHI manuals have the words "the system must be connected to the dedicated circuit". It's a requirement to follow manufacturers instructions

Jason Forne again would like to know where exactly this requirement is stated in codes or regs. Clause 4.10 as far as I understand applies to underfloor and ceiling heating cables.

It Dates WAY earlier than that :D That's some roaring 20's stuff right there.

@@cdw4255 at least it is not cloth insulated or knob and tube. I'd stick with 50s style but modern wire.

@@notamouse5630 Oh yeah, without a doubt.

@@notamouse5630 - and no visibsally asbestos coated wire

@@Killerspieler0815 Just paint that with insulative coating, the asbestos will be fire resistant and you can kick that can down the road. Cloth may rot but asbestos will last forever.

It could be because the drain pipe from the indoor unit needs to have a downhill slope

@@EternitP8 I think the minisplit units usually have a condensate pump, so that you don't need large diameter pipe with downhill slope.

@@Sixta16 actually, as an installer of mini splits, they rely on gravity for the condensate drains do need the slope

they gotta stand around for hours doing something not nothing

Yep, downward slope but you don't need a big pipe.

IKR!! It makes US panels look OCD.

They don’t all look like that

@@psygn0sis These panels are from the 80s and before. Often you would have a meter, 1 lights fuse (no breakers) and 1 or 2 outlets fuses and that's about it in them, so back then they were pretty good and easy to work on but over the years they become a spaghetti mess with all the stuff tacked on with minimal thought.

I live in a 2 bedroom unit built in the 1960s and I just have the main switch, meter, one circuit for lights and one for outlets. That's it. At least the old fuses have been replaced with breakers. There is natural gas hot water and stove/oven so no need for more circuits. It didn't come with aircon but I have a window unit.

Is that a mains distribution panel though? Looks more like a random assortment of shit nailed to some wood to me. 🤣

Gumtree is of course the Aussie equivelant.

@@NickStallman scamtree :D

Only things that we are allowed to do is changing light bulbs and pluging in an unpluggeding electrical appliances. Anything else we have a sparky come in.

@@joeltyler3427 I love it! An electrician is called a "Sparky"!

@@alansmith4734 it's bit of a nickname. But we still call them a electrician.

The time has come!

@@EEVblog2 To say fair's fair!

wow a midnight oil reference.. Never saw that coming.

I think the UK wiring system is strange. The Ring circuit sounds dangerous to me.

Yup, we do, but the half the people who are licensed to do this stuff are hacks that do half-assed jobs.

@@19CW86 how's it dangerous?

@@ArlenMoulton2 4 mm2 wire cannot handle 32 amps. If there is wirebrake in ring circuit it can be firehazard. Luckyly RCD's are used in UK circuits, it helps A bit 👍

​@@19CW86 Actually we use 2.5mm cable for socket rings here and that can handle 34A. Also, an RCD won't trip in the event of a broken ring, it's only for earth leakage or ground faults.

Sydney is probably 80-90% humidity the past few days. So it's fucking dreadful.

Yeah, but you can't open the windows because the fucking RAIN will come in. Not that you'd open them anyway, since it's so frigging cold LOL.

Sparkies never read the instructions. I hung one out to dry for ignoring that very clause and was told it didn't matter and to stop being pedantic. I said so you mean to tell me that you the electrician know more about this than the engineers and company that designed and manufacturered this device. The devices were smoke alarms and they had mixed brands and then interconnected them. Yet there was is no technical standard for interconnection of domestic smoke alarms. They are certifiee, designed and tested to only work with the same model. It's different for commercial smoke detectors.

Still looks like a mess to me. Have you seen one of GreatScott latest videos? That is proper wiring.

Yeah this is obviously messy. But I don’t understand DIN rails either. All they do is put all the breakers in a line. You still have to wire each thing individually. I don’t get why more countries don’t use integrated bus bars like in the US or Canada. I have seen lately some consumer units come with installable bus bars. Seems like an improvement. I also thought it interesting his wiring for the house looks like zip cord. Seems reasonable to me. In the US everything is romex which is 3 individually jacketed wires with another pvc jacket over it the bundle. It’s more bulky and expensive and I can’t see why something like this isn’t used instead.

@@stevebollinger3463 Actually in some countries every wall socket have their own fuse. That is NO joke, real building regulations. Needless to say what a mess that is! I am no fan of bus bars. More just because they aren't very modular plus they aren't very safe. Although, there is absolutely nothing more subjective than safety if you know anything about international safety regulations, hahahaha The EU/German system also works different, so the bus bar system doesn't make any sense. Your group or section wire just goes to the dedicated fuse. These fuses go to the main fuse. The main fuse is sealed. In the end, worst is still the US plug by itself, which can be knocked out easily, or left in/exposed half way. As well as double the current rating you need = 4x more power loss (P = I² * R ) = much ticker wires or more power losses.

​@@p_mouse8676 Bus bars are completely safe, your power goes through them too as substations use bus bars. If you are complaining about modularity I can understand that for the type that you see in DIN consumer units. Those have to be installed last and have to be removed from all breakers to change any breaker. You should look at the clip-in type breakers the US uses. The bus bars are on the back of the breaker box (consumer unit) and when you clip the breaker in it mates to both line and neutral (or line and line for 240V). It is modular, you can unclip any breaker without removing the rest. Eventually you can run out of places to clip breakers and then you have to add another box, so there is that. The bus bar is exposed when there are non-filled breaker positions, but the cover over the box has punchouts that you do not remove until a breaker goes there. So when you open the door there are just switches, no live anything. To get to the live parts you have to remove the cover and then be careful (unless there is a main external disconnect which is common now but was not previously common for residential). Once you punch out a punchout you must leave a breaker there to fill the hole and cover the live parts, even if the breaker is unused. The UK plug is better, not even worth arguing about. But still even other 240V countries (Australia in this case, Switzerland, most of the EU) haven't switched to it. So the US isn't on an island with regards to that.

@@stevebollinger3463 Yeah, most fuses these days are also clip-in type here as well, just on a DIN rail. Same idea I guess. I was more referring to the totally open in plain sight bus bars. I have seen them quite a lot. I would rather see a bar system with on top these kind of clip-in (on) modules. So yea, I agree with that, basically what you mean I think? I think the best plug is still the German style plug. Not only is the plug recessed, but also fixed and the ground connections on the side, spring loaded (in east EU they have a pin, which can break off sometimes) So it's absolutely impossible to knock a connector out or twist it, yet still looks elegant and are much easier to produce than rectangular pins. Compared to the UK type for example (which are humongous!) Btw, I am not from Germany, I just really like their way of doing electrical wiring. Just clean and straight forward.

Yeah lol, 5A

Oops, yeah 1kW. I think I put some measurement screen shots on twitter.

@@EEVblog2 But the nameplate on the air con says "Rated current 9A". For the installation / circuit breaker this should be the interessting figure.

@@ToBeDefined85 Don't you have 400V down there in Australia? (400V is the voltage between two 230V phases 120⁰ out of phase)

@@dahuaba9558 Keine Ahnung. Bin doch kein Australier :)

That looks like rockwool, not fiberglass.

Have you been to third world countries? Their wiring is usually *a lot* worse.

That looks scary looks like it comes out of the main switch

Looks like that wire used to feed the hot plates and it was connected into the main switch. Should have been also disconnected out of the hot plate fuse holder. I agree, looks terrible. My guess is they changed to gas hot plates and no longer required the circuit.

Why aren't more people mentioning this?

yikes! thats definatly..how ya doin!

It looks like a kid's science experiment compared to what we (are supposed to) do in Australia, too.

Awesome someone else noticed no earth leakage, circuit 32A and below require earth leakage

Actually. Yes. I'm a sparky.

@@Tim_Hilux Wow. Just wow.

It looks so messy and unorganised for me as a german. How do you trace problems in that cable Spagetti

For the time (80's), yes. I don't think they do this now.

In Australia legal and good can be 2 different things. I believe it should also be a rcd

Here in the UK my house has two - one for upstairs, one for downstairs. In my previous house there was one, protected by a genuine piece of 30 amp fuse wire in a rewirable cartridge.

Two is not uncommon, particularly on smaller houses. We use 230V for those playing along from the States.

In the UK fairly common on older houses. 2plug circuits, 2light circuits, cooker, and perhaps water heater/shower.

@@denisohbrien A separate ring for the kitchen as well, is normal from my experience

Our house has a single 10A breaker (230V). No separate breaker for lighting and plugs. But this house was built in the early '60s. There's a 16A breaker before the meter, the 10A one is after the meter, could be replaced to 16A, but I won't, until there's any aluminium wiring in the house.

yeah to start. Strain relief?

Also possibly broken some of the rules in 3.9.3.3.1 / 3.9.3.3.2 requiring adequate fixing and support of the cables strung through the ceiling

lol uk regs are so strict compared to AUS and NZ. we still use red and black for line and neutral.

We have a separate one for the stove.

I have 15 breakers + 2 RCD for a 1 bedroom apartment ! That's completely unnecessary but I can cut outlets and lights of each room separately.

@@EEVblog2 They are required now under as3000 to install a rcbo/safety sw to that new a/c circuit not just a standard c/b

We have 230 V in Germany, but modern apartments and houses have a ton of separate circuits, too. At least one for each room and a bunch more for the kitchen.

By the looks of the wiring, I reckon it's probably a shitty old "fixer-upper" that nobody has spent money on upgrading.

That's the law here too. Same for hot water systems and some other hard-wired equipment. These contractors clearly just did the dodgy to make a little extra $$. It's sad to think alot of people don't even know so they never get called back to fix the defects.

Are you from Germany as well?

I am an Electrician in Australia, that is a rubbish panel,

Enclosure is a junction box and is required for cable joins in roof spaces. Roof spaces shall have no single insulated conductors on show. Only insulated and sheathed (white outer covering) are permissible for installation in a roof space or within 100mm of a wall mounted electrical accessory.

That would cause global warming, since the heat would be reflected back into the atmosphere.

One reason - unions.

@@stevedotrsa yeah, we have the ETU to thank for that particular bit of government fuckery.

I feel like cooker isolators etc are around the same section. I thought something was off about that. But I also figured because he's in NSW that maybe NewSouthians just don't like themselves enough to care. Never seen anything like this in Vic. The distribution board is going to give me nightmares

@@benduffy4223 I live in the next suburb from Dave, and that board gives me nightmares too. I completely rewired ours when my son was born, since it was similar (from the 1970's).

What's 220V got to do with anything? All that means is that we only need half the amperage as needed in the USA. So the "electrical integrity" is less critical, not more.

This, sadly all the installers here in Finland are lazy and never do this, just some trunking if they can be bothered, and we have less sun so it will last for a few years, but sooner or later if the UV doesn't ruin the insulation, birds will steal it to pad their nests. It takes ages to re-insulate and tape the lines, instead of the 5 minutes it would have taken to properly tape them before connecting.