I also recommend once you find where the damage or fault is in a cable, run a fly lead between to the two points and connect it temporarily then turn on and test again to make sure that a new cable is the resolution to the fault. Saves time and money rather than running a new cable then testing and it not being solely the issue👍
Here in Norway it is also mandatory to have the wires in PVC tubes - which also makes it easier to replace them. And for these "old" spotlights that are warm we must use large insulation-boxes (basically a 5 sided plastic box) that you can put glands on for those PVC tubes.
Also in the Netherlands we usually have a single junction box per room, located behind the lamp in the ceiling. So fault finding is easy since you can disconnect almost everything from a single point.
I did work on an old radio (transistor) gram unit and when I opened it up there was the (oh yes) SKELETON of a mouse next to the mains transformer. Nothing on it just bone etc. So no guesses as to how long it had been there. 👀 A lot of the older valve systems had rubber coated wiring where the wiring as in house wiring with rubber sleeves, the rubber dried out and crumbled. 👀
With that amount of damage you have to assume that other cables may be damaged. I'd leave that circuit powered off, give the old cable to the customer, and have the them contact their insurance company.
Jason Dragon yeah I made them aware but the insulation readings were high enough that it’s not certain there is other damage. Difficult to know what to do.
@@artisanelectrics The insulation reading is good that means you as electrician is out of fault if something else happen, so good to turn on again and you of course document the reading and take pictures to make sure your on the right side of things.
Was anyone else waiting for the string of expletives towards the start when he pulled on the cable...I was kind of expecting it to give suddenly and the other end disappear into the insulation! 😁
We go thru the same problems in automobile repair where rodents chew thru wiring and after research we discovered that when wiring was made by certain manufactures they used peanut oil in the process of producing the coverings. Not sure if it's the same with home wiring but looks like the same results. Happy hunting!
I think the best one was checking a house with clear squirrel infiltration... Could not find the damaged cable though. Colleague was narrowing it down by isolating some circuits.. (old house with about 4x 1mm cables in the upstairs lighting breaker). He removed one feed.. yelled fit me to keep clear so I stepped back onto the loft ladder.. as he switched on I saw the flash right in front of me under the insulation lol
Good vid Jordan... here’s a weird fact for you, I’ve worked on BT line plant over 30years, and we get a lot of Rat infestation in external u/g duct, practically every time rats have chewed the cables in a multi DP joint they only chew through the live’ cables, dead or spare cables left untouched... dunno why..god knows?
I was taught that the main reason rodents chew wires is because there is salt molecules within the Grey PVC and it’s used during the manufacturing process, presumably salt water to cool down insulation once formed. The main culprit is normally squirrels as they have a very limited vegetarian diet and can lack salt in their diet so they will go to town if the find it. Rats / Mice have a more varied diet and tend more to chew cables to keep their teeth in check which is why they don’t tend to strip cables as much unless in the countryside where food is scarce or limited in variety. Hope this helps and keep your videos coming, I’m a big fan!
Great video as always! Here in Italy every cable is always inside a conduit/tube so that it is almost impossible to damage it and it is easier to change...i suppose you can wire things without conduits but no one does it in reality here, i think thats very good practice to use conduits
We did that with an extensive loft area and used recycled conduit stripped out from an old building that was being torn down. Did a deal with the site foreman and got it for peanuts.. OOO squirrels like peanuts 🥜 👀🤣🤣I agree that it certainly is well worth the extra time and money.
Expensive and unnecessary when you follow the appropriate placing of plates in your framing. Use Romex and the protective plates and you will doing it faster and cheaper and It pass inspection.
A little tip from an electrician here in Italy, where there are conduits fitted to carry cables - use a bit of liquid hand soap on the wire to lubricate it.... makes pulling much easier and less likely to snag.
You may have megger'd a squirrels face. Lol Nice video editing showing the time travelling help from your future self. And I like the way you pronounce wagos (wah-goes). Up north we call them Way-goes.
I once had a twin and earth cable in a school which has been chewed by squirrels. They has eaten all the outer and inner cores on a 2 inch section, no loss of power, no dead squirrel, no faults. Just 3 bare cores running happily along each other.
Good work. What we learnt, cables should be always installed into conduits, that brings safety and easy replacement possibilities. Flexible or rigid conduit, here flexible as it follows difficult shapes easily. Also easy to install with XPS/styrofoam with right tool in building phase.
I am glad that in the Netherlands (and more European countries) we use pvc pipes or flexible conduit for the wiring in walls and ceilings. This way you avoid these problems and you can easily pull new wires. But great video 👍
I really enjoyed this, very informative. Would love more fault finding videos if you can. I am an apprentice who does mainly new construction so fault finding is new to me. Thanks so much for taking time while working on the job to film and show us! Much appreciated from Canada ! 🇨🇦
I wonder if squirrels like wago box’s yet? In years to come we will find lots of wagos in ceilings that used to be in boxs. Plenty of C2’s to look forward too.
Wow, I've never seen rodent damage as bad as that! I was wondering if you are aware that the Wagobox Light and the Wago 224 connectors are not maintenance free? I assumed that they were, and made the mistake of installing them in an inaccessible location, but a Wago representative told me that they are not maintenance free. Obviously this isn't important where you installed it behind the downlight, since it's accessible.
The only trouble is, Jordan, the rest of the cable, and even your new cable, is not protected from further damage. Rodents chew soft things because their teeth never stop growing. If they didn't their teeth would grow into such a position as to make it impossible for them to eat and they would die.
Chewing soft things does not wear teeth. They chew hard things like wood, etc. The reason the eat insulation off is soybean oils used in modern plastic wire insulation. They smell the vegetable fats.
@@JP-pf5pz I have to disagree. I have been a spark 30 years and soy in PVC is a fairly recent thing. But rodents have been chewing cables for as long as cables existed. I have even seen rubber-insulated cables that have been gnawed.
Artisan Electrics, you are a great man and hamble how to give all your time to teach us to fault finding and rewire a lot of more, I am an electrician myself I have done NVQ level 3 and seventeen editions but I hardly did much work but since I start to watch your episode really enjoy it I appreciate your teaching Thanks a lot.
ages ago I heard there was some compound that smells like nuts to rodents, I think in some automotive electrical wiring, it may also be in house wiring (in the UK), that or they chew it to try grinding their teeth down, I think their teeth constantly grow out and they need grinding down constantly
A colleague on the site maintenance team was going up though a loft hatch from a pair of steps ladders which were a a couple of treads short for the task. I think he was looking for the source of a leak in the roof. He put his hands on the edge of the loft hatch and started to lift himself up; he got about half way through the hatch before his arms gave way and he came crashing back down. Turns out that there was some twin and earth clipped to the side of the hatch, and it looked a lot like the piece pulled out of the roof in this video. When that part of the building was re-wired after it was "squirrel proofed", everything was put in steel trunking and steel conduit. You can try really hard to keep out, but eventually they will find a way in.
Hi Artisan Electrics i am a viewer from Algeria and i have so many questions to ask you about electrical installations. the two most urgent are related to solar installation and grounding 1. i have a distribution board with two sources of electricity, city electric and solar (2400W inverter) the thing is the two electric circuit are never in contact with each other but i have to properly ground all the electric sockets for safety . the question is do i make sepret grouding bar for the diffrent sockets or it doesn't matter or there is other solutions. 2. for my solar installation i have a pure sine wave inverter from EPEVER 2400 watt and the problem is that it is properly grounded but when i mesur from the neutral or live wire to the ground i have half of the potential (115 volt) . ps: i have 230 volt between neutral and live i heard about neutral bonding and floating neutral but it is high level for me. i hope you can help and thank you in advance.
To me it sounds like you have an American inverter. What's been bonded to eartj is NOT actually the earth connection, it is the neutral. What you are calling live and neutral are actually two "hots" (in american speak), so basically two 120V phases which are 180° out of phase with each other. It is expected to have 120V between neutral and each phase, and 240V between the two phases, which is what you're seeing. Are you sure the frequency you're getting out of that inverter is 50Hz? If it's an american 60Hz inverter it might damage European appliances (especially anything with motors or old school transformers), so you should be careful. If I'm right, I think the correct way to fix this would be to decide which of the two phases you want to treat as neutral, and tie _that_ to earth, before the main RCD. The 120V midpoint neutral you should just cap off and never use again. You'd also need to always keep in mind the 60Hz thing and never plug anything old that doesn't explicitly say 50/60Hz in that circuit. Edit: actually now that I thought about it some more, this may not be the best solution. It may be better to just do it like the americans and treat both ends of the circuit as live. In any case you should default to what the manufacturer says. Disclaimer: I'm not an electrician and I might be totally wrong, especially since I'm diagnosing based off of a hunch. I especially don't want to be responsible for you setting your house on fire (or worse), so if you're unsure what you're doing, you're better off calling an actual electrician, preferably one that is experienced with PV systems.
Strikes me that the reason this particular cable was eaten is because it was (probably) exposed up in the apex void above the ceiling... whereas all the rest are lower down in the insulation and therefore 'safe' from the rodent activity...So, with luck, there is relatively little more damage elsewhere... fingers crossed!
As electrician on board of ships, my experience is that rats first go for the UTP-cables. One time a was searching for a malfunction in bow engine, more malfunctions popped up. At the time I was searching the rats were eating the cable. The ship load was grain at that moment.
Good technique for joining the old cable for pulling through, I'm going to try that in future. In the past, I've failed dismally every time I've tried to do that and been forced to resort to rods/tape or chopping bits of ceiling out
@@artisanelectrics what ive done in the past is run a bit of solder on the wires if i think its going to be a difficult pull through run a bit of silicone lub on the cable to
May 11 1882, Rules and Regulations for the prevention of fire risks arising from electric lighting (1st ed regs) "Reg 13. It is most essential that the joints should be electrically and mechanically perfect. .......", those round bakelite junction boxes as fitted in that situation have NEVER been allowed EVER. There is NO strain relief on the cables, if you have ever used any similar bakelite junction box then it MUST be fixed to a joist (or some other part of the fabric of the building) and all the cables MUST be cleated to provide strain relief, just because nobody ever did that does not make it right or acceptable. The light fittings are not acceptable (today) as fitted, maybe 20+ years ago you could get away with that if the lamps were dichroic, but NOT today, I would not have reinstated those lamps as you found them.
Round my neck of the woods, the glis-glis or 'edible doormouse' get up in the loft and wreak havoc.... Once trapped you are forbidden to let them loose into the wild again!
Hemel Hempstead railway station had a small colony of them, I think they spread out from Tring about 1900 from the Rothschild estate. The station had a few rats as well,
I guess I would have taken the opportunity to just replace those halogen lamps with modern LED lamps, getting rid of the transformers and reducing power consumption from 120Watt (6*20W) to just 18-36Watt
I would recommend to the customer that they get their loft areas checked outside for any rodent entry points and have them sealed. Don't want this happening again. Good video Jordan, your easy patience a blessing.
+Artisan Electrics Consideration could have been made to changing the lightswitch (and possibly others) to be a double-pole switch so that turning 'off' the lights will at least isolate if fault returns on that section... 16 to 20a single-gang switches are not heavy/oversize, might be a quick peace-of-mind to start with... Also, at what point do you suggest to the customer that a switch+RCBOs goes into the CU instead of the RCCB+MCBs?
If that cable is damaged like that then the owners need to investigate possible rodent activity et squirrels etc I've found its usually rats. They get in under the eaves etc In France there is a village in the mountains if I remember right, where the car owners kept getting real problems with their motors wiring, great business for the local garage 👀🤣It turned out the pest was rodent ! Sniff sniff rodent tripping out on cable... hmm better than cable tv for them 👀🤣🤣For those NOT in the know you have to make the customer aware by showing them what you found AND making them aware that if they don't investigate the cause they could end up with the same problem again. I'm not sure if there is a treated cable that rodents don't like ?
Might of been a good idea to look outside to see if there was any holes in the soffet or else where ,they will be back ,came up with the same problem many times
They are usually only actiive in buildings from spring to late summer,which is breeding time,normally two litters per year,up to about eight per litter, come autumn they will leave to build their dreys.
At first my money was on heat damage from the old halogens… I’ve seen that cable damage before and found a decomposed squirrel nearby, just fur and bones left it’s last words were, this cable is liiiiive
Had many like this learned there were roof rats sewer rats . Sewer rats are massive. And it’s there teeth. They need to ghaw at things to shorten teeth .. JB I used for years as a apprentice and well in to the 80/90s I’ve seen rats cause fires. In one house a rat welded itself to a ring main cable ( 2.5) t/ e. The stench and maggots made me puke also the size of it teeth blown away his body was stuck to cable. And I was in a cubby hole with gloves and mask on but smell was disgusting. I’ve worked or the dept of enivorment. In my younger days. And been down there sewers in Victoria. London rats everywere ... in pubs there are loads. ... had many a tricky time in pubs with rats ...
why don't you use conduits inside the walls? I dont get that.. I live in a 3rd word country (Arg) and we use conduits all over the place, there's no wire outside a conduit, either metal, plastic or corrugated plastic, even in dry wall... It's such a simple way of solving this issue..
14:35 If instead of having the neutral and CPC shorted, if you get a higher resistance connection between live and neutral, it can produce heat and become a fire hazard that won't trip the RCD or a breaker. I just hate rodents!
So thankful we don't have squirrel infestation in Poland. We got rats and mice but they never do sht. like that. We got martens, they can chew on cables in a car, but never heard off one chewing house installation. Weird. Great job tho.
When I’m using a draw wire to pull in a new cable I also tie & tape the two together with the narrowest joint possible. I always then always take the weight off of the new cable and simultaneously feed it into the hole whilst slowly and steadily pulling and taking the slack of the draw wire. Only when it’s stiff or get stuck do I pull it harder. Very nice when you can do what you need to and not create any damage. Hopefully there aren’t any dead rodents in the ceiling but you’d probably be able to smell them.
They down lights were what caused all the fires especially in attics with loads of rubbish when paper or cardboard got blewn onto the lamp it went on fire within 2 mins it was red hot I don't know how they got away with it for so longs what were the firemen thinking should have been reported bye them
The like the oils in the insulation I have heard. We have fixed loads of chewed cables in retirement home but they only ever chew the outer and leave the inner.
I think you should have recommended to rewire the full lot then gave them a 500 v IR test before lights were connected Cheers I believe your work mate came back to this fault as it went faulty again
My hobby is amateur radio. I have had a coaxial antenna cable in the garden chewed through completely by squirrels. I now run the cable in a plastic water pipe and that has finally done the trick!
Rodents' teeth grow like your finger or toenails, so they chew on wires to file their teeth down. Bloody nuisance or worse, considering that a large proportion of house fires are caused by rodent damage to electrical wiring. It should be illegal to wire a house without rodent proof conduits.
I had this at the house of a high profile client. Their chandelier had completely lost power and in tracing the cable I moved a book case and you could see where the mouse/rat had bitten the dust because there was a smoke stain on the skirting board 🤣
If its anything like automotive cable they have changed the make up of the cable for envionmental reasons and have added fish oils/animal fats to the mix
4:02 If you always tape in the direction that the cable will be moving you will avoid the overlap of the tape snagging if it has to pass through an obstacle, so you taped in the wrong direction.
Nice video for solve this problem. Just can you tell the differents value of the insulation test? Like : 0 to xxx Ohms = bad (shortcut). Xxxx to xxxx : not default, but not good. Xxxx to inf : good Thx
I am pretty certain they would chew that as well, it's PVC just like the cables, a few houses I have been to had leaks, caused by them munching on the plastic pipes, think it may have to be metal conduit to be safe 😂
You have Ray Brewer of Connexbox to thank for maintenance free junction boxes. He is,the electrician who introduced Wago and his design of maintenance free junction free boxes and much more to the UK. CREDIT where it is,due.
Had a Dr's surgery years ago with no network computers working. They used Unix with a specialix card with everything taking over 25 pin serial some 32 terminals. The server room was in an old bathroom there was even a toilet & sink in there still. Anyway popped the huge trunking off the wall to find loads of dead rats & all the cables stripped to copper. Got the lead GP in & said there's ya problem, call us back once it's cleaned up byeeeee. Luckily installations got the rewire job that was a big big job.
2 Things! 1. Would of it been made easier to pull the cable through if you sprayed a lubricant like WD40 or similar or wrapped it in PTFE Tape? 2. I am just putting this out here and I am not sure if this would be the case or not, however you mentioned the fact that the roof was heavily insulated in your previous video, so I am wondering if it maybe down to insulation if it was sprayed in and curing was acidic and it burned the insulation away or if the previous sparky cut the insulation away?
Wago could do with some competition. The total cost of that connection is about £2, which adds up on big projects. The old boxes are about 50p. But then again I use the Click Flow, which is even more expensive, but I remove all the lights so the painter does not 'cut around' them as I cant stand to see that. The click flow connectors are great once fitted, but do take as much time as an old j-box
A rat had been poisoned and died behind a dot and dab wall deteriorated and the maggots were looking for an exit, they found the socket and tried to escape, customer said he could hear sparking behind the socket, kept on tripping thought fault with the socket I was shocked when I discovered a back box full of maggots and the landlord said he had a rat problem so put down lots of poison. Job finished 15 min but not pleasant. Interesting watching, I’ve retired now and live in Thailand but love watching your vids. Nice calm manor you have well done.
Do you know what I recommend using Tech cord wiring that stuff will have metal Armand Shield wiring if mines And rats And Squirrels if They try to chew Through that they Can't