Canadian electrician here, for tricky fault finding we’ll often plug a very long extension cord into a known good outlet - and use its ground/earth and neutral as reference.
😂 sorry but that's such a caveman way of doing things. From what I've seen you do things better than America, but the fact neither of you test installs and literally just "troubleshoot" if there is a fault is crazy to me. Literally just juice it up and wait for a fault.
Very good question! In this instance it may or may not lead to the cause of the fault because the fault could also be rodent or water damage, or component failure. Still a very good starting point.
Lol thats what I've always said Especially if getting an electric shock , what was the last thing I touched and pull away from that It's better than 'jumping' and falling off a fifteen foot ladder bringing down the whole tee bar ceiling with you ( Not a good out come) If getting a shock what part of the light are you touching, is it the tee bar that's live? Is it the air conditioning duct behind you in the ceiling space that you leaned on ( faulty fan motor?) Just slowly pull away from the last thing you touched and you should be right ( And most of the time no one even notices you got a shock !) Lol They do wonder though how you knew there was a fault with the air con fan / whatever else was the fault ' it's just experience, I can tell without even looking at it ' Can't own up to getting a shock it's too much paper work ! And don't want to break an arm or leg landing on a desk and concrete floor jumping off the ladder Rule no one of sparkies don't own up to getting a shock Rule no 2 is don't be afraid of getting a shock If you get a shock you get a shock Just stay aware and stop touching the last thing you touched I don't know why people jump so hard when they get a shock It is you jumping up and spearing your head on a spike that's sticking thru the desk above you as you jump up , or falling of your ladder that causes more harm/ death than the shock itself most times Was with an apprentice once he was up a ladder and got a shock while removing a self contained emergency light ( Power was off but he must have touched part of the inverter circuit LOL) up a ladder in a corridor He went mental was looking around shouted / screamed as he punched the wall next to him ! I was like WTF???? If you get a shock just let go of it and reassess , make sure you are not still getting a shock , then carry on not touching that part again or testing with a Meter if not sure where the 'live' bit came from I told him he had better get his shock reaction under control or one day he will end up getting fried big time when working on our larger highrise main switch boards Funniest thing was the wall he punched ( full force) was a really old hard thick solid fibre cement wall He cracked it and put a decent dent in the wall But he also broke his hand / knuckles had to go to hospital and get x-rays etc He would have fallen off the ladder too if I hadn't been stopping it from falling over as he was dancing around punching walls I did ask him if he felt like an idiot 🤣 I told him yeah ok you got a shock , How the f★ck is smashing your hand and trying to fall off the ladder going to make it better? You already got the shock It already happened ,why add to any 'damage' done Even the next day I asked him how his hand was bruised swollen in a cast I had to make him aware he wasn't in any pain or anything from the shock he received. And would have been fine right now if he hadn't hit the wall for no reason. 🤣 I live in Australia but I'm from the UK Maybe it's the English in me Get an electric shock Reassess the situation Hope no one noticed and Just keep on working 👍🙂
That was the first question I asked (and always ask) the homeowner, what did you add or change? Nothing was changed, second question here is always, did it happen when it started raining? Their answer to this one was it hadn't rained for a few days before or after the fault started. So could be some rodent damage or some water leakage that took some time to develop. Haven't been back yet, so it's still a mystery and homeowner, unfortunately, is not too concerned. Even though I expressed how this can go really bad.
Comment from Germany: Perhaps I did not get everything languagewise, but my take on this problem would be first to use my signal-injector, that I normally use to find the breaker for a specific outlet, just reversed. So inject the signal at the switchboard and then go around the house with the signal-probe to find the outlet, where the injected signal can be detected. That narrows down the number of suspects. BTW, I've seen similar if not worse installations in Brazil, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Albania, South Africa - so no Asian peculiarity. In Albania for example they intentionally shuffle the cable colours even in secondary transformer stations, because the bad guys had quickly learned, that green-yellow never is live so you can steal that wire without getting electrocuted. Now you never know - chances are three out of five that green yellow is live 🤦♂ Cheers Andreas
Some years ago I visited Vietnam and talked with the owner of an restaurant (a old guy from UK) about my education. After i sayed that i did a school for electrical engineering, he insisted that i switch to the next seat because from there I didn't saw the open switchbox with the lose wires 😂
Australian sparky here: We almost exclusively use stranded conductors so twisting is basically commonplace. We mostly use neutral and earth bars though but every now and again I'll come across an entire installations worth of earths twisted and soldered. In Queensland we are also required to twist and solder a 6mm neutral tail for the meter neutral no matter the size of the main neutral. When we're terminating into switches, sockets or connectors - we twist all our conductors.
Aussie Sparkie Lol meter on the pole in the street So they can't tamper with it , or' innocently accidentally' tap into the mains before the meter The supply authority finally found a great solution to stop that kind of caper! Assuming they were an official connection and not just hard wired to to pole lines with out a Meter LoL if they are gonna steal power there they just have to go all in straight from the street 🤣 I would have thought using an Independent earth - a trailing lead from a screw driver stuck into a free bit if dirt outside Would be a must on any 'confusing fault with weird unexplained live wires ' just to have a conductor with a KNOWN potential to build your fault finding logic on ( The live conductor of the mains feed in could have compromised insulation making the whole house live via concrete REO etc meaning the concrete floor they are using and assuming that its close to earth potential when it could actually be floating live and incorrectly basing all their fault finding readings off that ) It could even be The neighbour on the other side of the wall may have a fault that's livening up the building (I have seen this done ) It's a Rookie mistake to over look and not use a true Independent earth In any installation that is new to you , Don't trust anything or cable colours until you have proved it yourself using your own Independent earth It's the best way to stay alive ( and cover your arse - so little timmy doesn't get a tingle every time he is playing in the water around the outside tap till one day he gets a good one ( shock) and drops dead meaning you spend the rest of you life in a concrete cell as you left an installation connected reverse polarity ( Although apparently Thailand probably wouldn't report it as an electrical death! so all good 👍) In Australia using a Trailing lead from an Independent earth stake / long screw driver driven into the middle of the front yard To prove the polarity of the incoming mains And ensure the installation is not reverse polarity .. At least all of the circuit breakers in the video appear to be double pole It's more important for the final job to be 'electrically sound' than it is to look 'perfect' Or The next sparky comes along Fault-finding tracing wires out has to cut tons of cable ties off to trace where each wire goes Its better for a switchboard to look like cr★p using whatever (electrically correct) gear you can source / have ( different brands/ age etc) It's better to be safe and perform with out any problems for years to come rather than look pretty and not work right / fail . Just because is had to ' look nice' Performance and reliability is More important than looks Even if it's just down to leaving enough slack in the wires for future maintenance, with minimal interruption to client . Ease of tracing wires in a full board Its A bit hard in a full switch board when you pull on the wire you are tracing and they all move as they are all solidly cable tied together So you Have to turn the whole board off and take it apart to reach and cut the cable ties off safely Just to trace the wires ! Argghh ! Why are they using the MEN system if they aren't running earths through the house The whole and only reason for joining N to general mass of earth is to provide a KNOWN given potential to be used in fault finding And avoid 'impossible' to find faults crossing from one installation to another via water pipes concrete REO etc As in a fault like this In A two wire system with no reference or link to general mass of earth If one installation has active shorted to a water pipe ( could be a toaster with an active part touching its frame placed on a metal draining board of a sink) or even just a hot water boiler With just that There's no issue or tripping Untill another installation way down the road develops a neutral fault ( short) to a water pipe Let's say a toaster Neutral fault to its case and it's on a metal kitchen sink draining board that has taps on it Resulting in ' nuisance' tripping at both installations Due to current flowing between the two houses via the water pipe / general mass of earth ( especially if it's been raining - another 'random factor') And neither can figure out why their C/b keeps tripping 'at random' when all the factors that they can't see and are in aware of align. If the toaster is moved to a bench top next to the sink Some one could get electrocuted just by touching the sink and the toaster, but only if the random fault is present in the first installation ( their fault could also be in their toaster etc) That IS the only reason NEUTRAL is tied to general mass of earth, the MEN system To 'contain' any faults to within an installation itself. Regardless of what happens with YOUR electrics you won't be endangering your unwitting neighbours lives Only your own life. yes The MEN system CREATES a danger of getting a shock if you stand bare foot in a puddle of water and decide to touch something that is live. But it is a KNOWN danger That is always present it is not reliant on ifs buts and maybes that may or may not be present / happening somewhere else ! It just IS , it's a constant , a given , a known factor. That is why an earth is required at every GPO and lighting point Running an extra conductor to every electrical point does incur an extra cost during installation which is a down side But it is required as a safety measure to mitigate the Danger and the Risk of shock between live parts and earth Introduced by using the MEN system . When a shock is received to earth from an MEN system the fault can be identified and rectified as it is has to be local within that installation Without the MEN system the fault could be One of many things and 'no longer visible' as a fault in some other random installation has been removed (Such as the faulty hot water system down the road just reached temperature and it's thermostat just turned off) The MEN system forces the people with dodgey gear to fix it ( Makes the people with dodgey electrics aware of it by tripping THEIR own C/Bs not the neighbours ) Lol I guess rather than guessing if it's safe or if there's a danger of an electric shock To earth , it's been made into a DEFINITE Known danger condition ( that is great for fault finding and fault containment) Oh and BTW when you are in a hi rise apartment A flower pot plant is NOT considered a good place to put Independent earth 🤣
@@mikeypc3592 Bit of an epic isn't it. Can't argue about the independent earth though. Reveals all if the transformer star (wye, centre) point is earthed even via high impedance. Go back to basics, establish the service polarity and work from there.
@GlenPoll-ox2hj the only thing I have time to reply to is about independent earth. Yes, it's absolutely a needed thing. I have a multifunction tester that uses 2 independent earths that I run as far from the install as possible.
In Asia, they normally embed cables (normal cable) in the concrete, and where there is land movement, cable will be pinched. I think you should check on power cable in from the meter outside
When discussing wiring with people from the US (we do it wrong so everyone else can do it better), it is simpler to use amps rather than translating physical wire sizes.
Trouble is, anywhere outside North America (at least in industrialised countries) there's no direct correspondence between physical wire size and current-carrying capacity because the latter depends on whether the wires are surrounded by air (overhead lines), buried in the ground, buried in plastered brick walls or surrounded by thermal insulation, and whether multiple cables are bundled together (heat derating). Ambient temperatures and length (voltage drop) also play a role. One example from my recent jobs: normally 16 mm2 is good for 63 amps. However, my run is slightly over 100 m, so in order to keep voltage drop under control I had to derate to 25 amps.
@@retrozmachine1189 however quite often they’re not as strict in the US or other countries potentially for if this insulation over a wire make you calculate the exact value of insulation and all the wattage dissipated and do all that calculation to work out temperature rise and stuff
@@UKsystems Take a look at pretty much any country's electrical standard and it's full of tables that give the situation of the wire and the expected terminal temperature under a given load. Why do you feel it necessary to gift your peculiar type of misinformation to the world?
@@retrozmachine1189 because I mentioned various factors you did not include calculations which determine extra factors such as as far as I know in the US running in insulation would be a different current rating but in most other countries there are a lot more factors to consider in this then just one factor it gets much more technical
I wouldn't have thought there would be a "short-cut" to fault finding - in the west we have standardised installation methods which specify colour coding etc because overall it is more efficient since everyone should know what the standards are. When you don't have a standardised install each person working on an installation needs to work out what the install actually is before they can work on it - this takes time which adds to the cost and reduces efficiency. On top of this you have electrical safety to consider - we don't get nearly as many electric shocks as we used to due to better product safety design - I remember appliances my parents had and used reguarly where getting a shock off them was relatively common occurance and you soon learnt to be careful!
Watching from the US. I have completely switched to Wago. I am in the process of re-wiring my house completely, two new sub panels will feed everything and I only use Solid strand #12 to all circuits, even for 15amp circuits.
I'm not an electrician & don't play with our wiring but here in Australia was watching an electrician install an extra power point ( outlet) in my garage. He twisted wires together then inserted the twisted wires into a connector that has a screw clamping them all together. Our power points (outlets to Americans) have terminals designed for twisted wires to be inserted then clamped with a screw. All circuits in my house have individual Earth Leakage Protection in the switchboard. And definitely standard colours only! The wires are all multiple strands but I remember solid wires when I was younger. Our power outlets are all plastic & look very space age vs the American outlets which look like they were designed & made in the 1950's.
They do have fires and deaths caused by electrics they just don't officially attribute them to electrical faults ( as would probably create too much (pointless) paper work to prove/ not prove the cause was electrical )
@@GlenPoll-ox2hj Nope. The buildings are concrete and not flammable. No fires. Plus many tropical buildings may have permanent ventilations that cannot be closed, so that any little smoke from a switchboard going up in flames will harm no one.
Do they have neutrals tied together from different branch circuits? That would explain the small changes of leak current. I would also use tone generator to trace out circuits.
Hi there, I'm from South Africa, and we do Electrical and solar on a daily basis. The way they do it here especially in new housing estate's that's is very expressive properties is chocking.them you go out into rural areas and it's even worse. There no building or any construction regulations apply. I had to do a COC after installed a Battery backup system. But could not get proper earth reading. The saw cable coming from distribution pole. It's a black cable with a 10 mm red wire and surrounded by a earth armouring. No neutral so the n at house the connect 2 x2.5 mm surfix cables to this. So no way I can get proper earth point to complete test. I suggested to customer we fit grounding rod and Earth their DB, they said no worry we don't need COC out here.
Get a spool of wire and connect it to a known good ground. For tracing wires that are not in conduit you can use a "toner", a two piece set, one generates a warble audio frequency and it is detected by an inductivly coupled sensor. They are intended for telephone wiring troubleshooting but can be used on deenergized wires as well.
I have found out they either put in an earth stake, especially for larger things such as apartment complexes or they rely solely on RCD protection in most installs in Vietnam
The use of double-pole breakers everywhere is interesting to see, as of all the installations I have seen in both Canada and Poland, single-pole breakers are used and the neutral does not have any disconnecting means.
I guess the one thing in your favour is the 20 sec delay before the breaker trips. This allows you to get a decent reading off the clamp meter before the current trips off. My step one would be to use the clamp meter to confirm there is excessive current passing through the wire to the breaker - and it's not just a faulty breaker. Step two would be to compare the current in the feed wire to the board, with current in the neutral to the board (from DB1). if these are similar Amps, then a massive leak to earth, through the fabric of the building, is eliminated from the list of causes. However if there is a massive difference, then an earth fault is indicated as the cause of excess current. Should you suspect this discrepancy is due to a neutral current bypassing DB2, then go back to DB1 and verify. If this all confirms the tripping is due to an overload or a short, then it's the old story of identifying the guilty conductors and tracking along them to the fault. which looks like a nightmare 🙂
Did all that and that's how I located the bad neutral. Originally they had it on the hot and assumed it was the neutral since it had all the neutrals on it. Then figured bad breaker internally. But didn't trip when all wires disconnected from breaker and isolated it to that one neutral, that was originally on the hot. When connected and that branch circuit off, there is anywhere from 500mA to 1000mA flowing on it, coming from the other circuits. Verified by measuring the return neutral on the breaker, then connecting that bad neutral and watching current drop on the breaker neutral to main panel. But where that neutral connects to the rest of the circuit, I can't find. Its in the wall or in the ceiling and homeowner does not want to start cutting holes in ceiling. Even though I explained how bad this is.
If there is a difference between hot and neutral. I would start to look at places that have earth close to it. Like pipes, water, metal doorframes, outdoor lamps/switches. If hot and neutral carries the same current. Start to break up the circuit in the electrical boxes to find out when the breaker stops tripping. When finding shorts on PCBs, I add external current limited power into the short and check with an IR-camera. The fault path and return path will light up and show you the way to the fault 😃
11:30 This is a big difference. Here in Finland I could safely touch any wires I see anywhere (clearly broken is a different thing and I have reported a light pole with a hanging cover once) and I won't worry when my dog walks over wagos connected to wires on the ground because I can be 100% sure those would never be live. And I regularly use my fingers to find a socket in the dark and to guide the plug in without a worry. Even my bathtub is connected to an outlet.
I live in Argentina (220-230V @ 50Hz and three phase 380V ). A lot of houses don't have a ground wire so I dont get a reference for neutral or line. I use the amp clamp in volts and check against body, if it gives me around 110V then I know it's the live wire, or the box itself if its a metallic one. For wires in junction boxes I use one of those non contact detectors (even tho my amp clamp has that function, it's too big sometimes) but it's not that reliable when having a bunch of wires all smushed togheter
It is strange how in Asia they do not use earthing so much. Even on Japan it is often not used or you may have to earth the device with a septate wire that you screw in.
Depends on where in Asia. For the ex-colonial countries ruled by the British and some of their neighbors, the plugs used are the same as the UK and the standards are very similar, including the use of earth wiring, etc.
Yes, some Asian countries have a surprising selection of double-insulated appliances, so earthing is less of a necessity. Have you ever seen a double-insulated full-sized fridge? I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a Samsung one for sale at the local Thai embassy about 20 years ago!
3:30 Having just built a house in Khon Kaen, Thailand, and knowing a lot about US electrical standards, the lack of adherence to color codes drove me crazy, I was able to successfully enforce only green for ground wires though.
I have a fault on a new garage built in my garden. My basic plug tester says live neutral swapped but everything is connected correctly. If I plug somthing into a socket the consumer unit trips the moment I turn on a grinder plugged in. Are there any forums you guys advise to chat and figure out the fault thanks.
I have to say, many years ago, when I was a apprentice and working with a old hand electrician(sparky) we happened to be working in a huge house, which had a butler. whilst there we had to ok any work we did through him. On one occasion, we needed to get into the huge bathroom and asked the butler if it was ok. He said that madam was using the bathroom and would tell us when it was free. Later given the ok to go into the bathroom, the very first thing we saw was a rack across the bath with a toaster on it! The electrician called the butler and said to. him "does she realise just how dangerous that is?" "You'll have tell her yourself" said the butler. So telling madam about the danger of the toaster directly above the bath on a soap rack was, she said, "Young man I have been doing this for years!" Very lucky lady.
The question is, to what does this neutral go? Something must not be working when you disconnect it. So just run around put a socket tester in every outlet. Since the sockets are connected to the light switches, that should also cover most of the lighting.
It's the return for everything on that one breaker, three rooms and two floors. Everything works with that neutral disconnected, it's that good of a ground and what is scary about it.
Unfortunately it's a giant puzzle so it's going to mean starting somewhere and working until you can't work anymore. I would attempt to colorcode phase neutral but in the end I might end up just tagging lines with tape. You just have to go from one box to the next until you finish line and then rinse and repeat. I would probably replace that big bundle of twisted wires with some sort of junction block. eeeeeee
And what you're calling a death stick is a very commonly used tester in most of continental Europe as far as i know. I've never had , or heard of a problem with one.
Unless some smart a★rse decides to be 'funny' and replace the resistor or bypass it with a thin strand of wire. Or swapping it for a 12v auto test screwdriver It has been done in the past. You can only hope that the fear of prosecution would stop them in todays work environment as that kind of behaviour wouldn't be tolerated and there's an expectation for any 'prankster' putting lives at risk to be severely reprimanded. Still if they are stupid enough to do it There's no guarantee other than banning the neon test screwdrivers altogether
I have known them to go wrong, but nobody gets killed. You alway check it's working before relying on its readings, unless you're an idiot. There is no tool that's not dangerous in the hands of an idiot.
Back in the 50s and even early 60s quite a few European countries didn't believe in wire colours either. I've seen installations with all wires (except earths) the same colour or different colours for each circuit but both wires of each circuit the same colour. Probably didn't conform even back then but people did it. A friend of mine used to live in a place like that. All circuits were 1.5 mm2, lighting #1 was two whites, lightning #2 was two purples, sockets #1 was two yellows and a red earth, sockets #2 was two dark blues and a red and sockets #3 was two browns and a red I think. Built in 1960. 10 amp MCBs that were completely useless, once we had a short in a floor lamp and it blew the 20 A bottle fuse outside the flat rather than tripping the MCB. Someone thankfully bodged in an RCD (TT supply) but that was the only upgrade in five decades. Eventually the place saw a full rewire.
It's the same here in India. The reason is that usually the customer buys the wires, and any excess is waste, so the electrician just uses whatever is remaining to finish the work. Sometimes they use colored insulating tape to indicate polarity.
Each plug having it's own fuse is due to us having 30A ring ccts. In Spain all the socket groups are spares on a 15A breaker so don't need plug fuses. They have a duel plug system of big round sockets for heavy appliances max 15A and the 7A low power things can also plug into them. The 7 A sockets tend to be 2 pin with only the larger sockets having an earth. If your appliance has to be earthed use the larger plug. Also RCDs on every spare is now common.
The plug fuses would be entirely unnecessary if the British didn't have 32 A socket circuits. If socket circuits were limited to 16 or 20 amps, as they are elsewhere, fused plugs would offer very little benefit. Doing away with them would mean no more fire risks with illegally imported unfused plugs or adaptors, no more easter egg hunts for blown fuses and no more fire risk with broken ring circuits and no risk of DIYers "repairing" fuses with tin foil.
@@Ragnar8504 you answer your own question, illegal plugs , British have a kite mark plug , And a fuse because they have 34 amp circuits , I would prefer to hear a 13 amp fuse pop in the plug then, get 2000 watts up my arm and down my leg,
Yes, very advanced. So advanced that it's still not mandatory to have a dedicated electrode on your PME supplies. Even more alarmingly no electrode of any type at all, not incidental via plumbing bonds, nothing at all, if the situation meets. Tell that to anyone from another country that implements TN-C-S earthing and watch their jaw drop in disbelief... Now this is not to say UK electrical is terribly deficient but calling it advanced is a bit of a fairytale too.
Oh the life of the traveling electrician! It's fine until a friend says, "oh, Daves an electrician". Gee, thanks! Sheer bravery in action! Good luck guys.
On the plus side No matter what work you do ( or possibly how bad the work you do is ) When you leave it won't be any worse than when you started 🙂 The mentality is if it's doing what they want it to do Then it must be ok A little bit like the home wifi routers when they first came out They plug it, find and connect to their wifi router and just use it With no protection So anyone could connect to it and use it . Ahh , the clients famous last words - 'but It's working so it must be all right ' Lol Same mentality Everything is good , - until it isnt Altho wifi isn't likely to burn your house down or kill you lol
Irish Electrician here who has recently moved to Canada, No.6 would be 13.3mm Cable, also the practice of twisting wires & using wire nuts still annoy me I feel as I’m doing something wrong every time I do it over here!
Wire nuts work quite well if used properly but they're amazingly labour intensive, which might be why they never caught on in most parts of Europe (the Dutch, Portuguese, Italians and Swedish used loads of them before Wagos became a thing).
I can't stand wire twist nuts I've never had any good experience with them ( Went to a job , discovered some one previously used them but the Insulated cover part of the nuts had fallen off leaving the 'springs' on the twisted wires that were now live and exposed I will never use them Twist the wires and solder and tape them OR. twist the wires together and put them in a loose single Insulated connector and securely tighten the terminal screw to secure the wires and tape it I use Screwed terminal 'bp connectors'
Overcurrent or short circuit. Does it trip straight away or does it take a while? Unplug every appliance and turn on to make sure it's not an appliance. If it works with everything unplugged then plug everything back in one thing at a time until it trips. If not appliance, then leave everything unplugged again and find out what that actually feeds. It might be quicker to run another cable through if thats a conduit I see there!!!
He mentioned 20 seconds, so it has to be the thermal trip but a fairly substantial current, so a low-impedance earth fault but no dead short. I think they already disconnected all portable loads and this circuit still tripped. It's a conduit but without knowing where the other end is you can't replace the wires. You could try blowing compressed air into the conduit and spotting the whistling noise at the other end but if the conduit is only in the wall and loose wires above the suspended ceiling that won't help a whole lot.
I seen metal sink, it should have metal faucet and pipes that go into ground, even plastic pipes full of water are good enough for AC groud path, test with meter to faulty wire and sink. Maybe there is wired in warer heater or furnace, or some large applience i seen, that is not on sockets. Or the wire is dammaged in the wall touching some other screw or metal, appearing like grounded. Wish ya success on the adventure.
Can't really Use metal sink or hot water system as an Independent earth reference untill you prove it ,as there could be a water pipe bond to what they thought was earth / neutral ( or polarity swapped after it was done) or hot water sys etc could be down to earth / frame making all the taps/ sinks live You Need an Independent earth from the yard (so that you know without any doubt that it is earth potential,) with a trailing lead to test polarity , if for nothing else to test taps and sinks etc and make sure they are not live ate all Water pipes can be live and if they are unfortunate and a water pipe joins bursts you can get arcing ( that you can see at night at least) across in the escaping water from one pipe to the other I have seen it when all of these unlikely events occured at the same time.( Neutral burnt off at point of entry so the massive load of industrial cooking equipment being used was returning to earth/ neutral in the street via the water pipes) I don't know if the pipe join had issues before and was going to break anyway or if the electric current found it as a high resistance created a hot spot and melted solder or something? Either way seeing I guy standing in a puddle of water being sprayed with water attempting to stop the leak while you could see flashes of light in the water around the pipes Was the worst thing I have ever seen , he was so lucky he didn't die. ( It was at a restaurant and lounge was p★ssed as a f★rt) I was shouting at him to get away from it I wasn't going to go near him ( I was p1$$ed not stupid) And Turn the bl★★dy power off And then turn water off/ tackle the burst pipe. They had to shut the restaurant down for the night till it was fixed so the owner was upset so asked them would they rather lose one nights business or have someone get electrocuted and a coroners investigation Requiring the evidence to stay as is until fully recorded etc meaning the restaurant remaining closed for the duration . Faced with that the owner did the right thing ( Plus I told them I had to demand access to their switch board to turn the mains off ) otherwise I could be held liable for any injury/ death Even tho it was nothing to do with me (and I was p★$$ed as ) as I saw a dangerous situation that I knew could easily be deadly and the clowns were literally playing with their lives. Fun times 😃
@@A_Canadian_In_Poland Physics dont change in Poland. There is certain factors to calculate how much the cable can take and most of the time 1.5mm2 is fine for 16A
16:30 I just got back from a holiday in the Philippines, over there they seem to have an electrical shower hooked up in the bathroom under the sink, so the shower heater will feed hot water to the sink, the shower and a bidet which is like a mini shower head. could be a better way for those Vietnamese people possibly..
Even as a DIYer, I know from experience those neon screwdrivers are death traps. They can have false negatives, and more commonly - false positives (which then leads you to assume it's wrong all the time and work on the circuit despite the neon glowing a bit).
It's similar here in the Philippines - however it's 220v 2 phase - no neutral - and unless you put your own earth rod in - there is no earth. All the connections in the roof space are just twisted together - even the high amp lines for an oven or an air con. All the wiring in my house is green. No colour coding - nothing.
Everything wired in black with twist & tape splices is the most common in the Philippines. Electricians do usually wire more systematically here than that example from Vietnam. When building our own house, I did all the wiring according to the Philippine Electrical Code using the prescribed colors and WAGOs for splices. I had to order the wires via Lazada as local hardwares often did not have all the colors I was using: 1st phase - black, 2nd phase - red, earth - green. Wagos were ordered from Amazon US. Colored electrical tape can be used to mark wires in the official colors on both ends, if the hardware stores do not have the right colors available. UL listed American wire nuts are available from Wilcon.
@@ChristianWagner888 it's a sign that nobody is paying attention to the standards when the local electrical store doesn't even stock the appropriately coloured wires and connectors. Blimey.
5:22 - no, soldering may give the impression of a better joint, however given enough current the solder can melt which can cause all sorts of problems.
Since I've been qualified to test, I've never even considered twisting any cables together, as an apprentice many moons ago I have been quilty of twisting cpc together to share earth sleeving! I cringe at my early bad habits 😂
its easy to forget that most of what we do in the US/UK for wiring is for safety. if you just ignore safety rules, then you can get pretty wild and creative and it will still work just fine. it will just not be as safe
If there is a difference between hot and neutral currents. I would start to look at places that have earth close to it. Like pipes, water, metal doorframes, outdoor lamps/switches. If hot and neutral carries the same current. Start to break up the circuit in the electrical boxes to find out when the breaker stops tripping. When finding shorts on PCBs, I add external, current limited, power into the short and check with an IR-camera. The fault path and return path will light up and show you the way to the fault 😃
That's basically what I did with the amp clamp. Since I knew I had 500 to 1000mA on that neutral in the board, I went to every switch, receptacle, box etc... that is on that circuit to check for the same current, but was unable to see that 500 to 1000mA anywhere. So the fault is somewhere before it gets to any of the boxes. The attic is unaccessible and it's concrete and brick walls. So trying to find where that circuit splits to feed everything is the problem. Owner does not want to start cutting holes in the ceiling or knocking holes in the walls.
Just seen your comment, my garage light has done that since we moved in and the t tubes always glow...worrying..... Not my wiring but I will be annoying you re wiring it myself top to bottom. Had to re wire it to move it as I'm doing a full renovation and its a birds nest, believe me it cant get any worse.
I was, and I will twist cables. No shitty wagos needed to burn down my house, or houses I'm wiring/fixing.. My entire country used twisting method for decades, and generally without fire caused by them. Before you judge, don't forget that the US uses the same way to make junctions. There is the current double according to Europe, because of the half voltage. I saw many twistings, and asked myself, how on earth they did not burnt the house. Fault finding: connect appliances one by one, with a timeframe longer than usual tripping time.
I am a US Electrician, Jordan. All I can say is what I see. What a mess, and so dangerous! Vietnam Electrical looks nasty. Love your videos, Thanks for sharing, Russ, 28 years in the Trade.
My wera screwdriver set came with a “death screwdriver” they are ok if you have to prove a live core with no neutral or earth but you have to make sure your not touching anything to earth which is where things go wrong
Same here in Brazil, no real color code followed just whatever they have and they twist wires like crazy. here I think its a cost issue if they can save a penny they will
Exactly,! Here in Paraná interior we have bi voltage mains supply,127/220v tomadas (wall outlet sockets) are, identical for each voltage. Where many things like phone Chargers/laptop chargers are multi voltage now, things like fridges, microwaves, air con units are not!
i'm not qualified but have some electical and diagnostic knowledge and i would resort to using what used to be called "belling out " equipment to send a signal in a cable and trace it. This is such a mess hahahahah. We used to use this device to trace twisted pair phone and networking cable throughout office blocks and i'm sure it would work here.
Probably yes, unless the wires are too deep inside the concrete. The neutral-earth short might affect the tracer though, not 100% sure if they work with one of the wires earthed.
Well you weren't much help tracing this fault.I like to use a tone tester for speed.narrows down what is actually on this leg or where the break is.Strange voltage are normally a broken neutral
Looks a real challenge, I'd love to go and spark there instead of the UK. Whilst it looks horrifying, I do wonder statistically how many people get killed from bad electrics!?
I believe they use this type of meter box because meter tampering would be very common here otherwise if you think about the electrical system state shoving a couple of screws in wires would probably be peoples first thought
My money is with the issue being a reversed Line and Neutral inside one of the appliances. I recall a Washing Machine that was produced with the Line having resistance to earth and the Neutral inside the Washing Machine being connected to Line.
Simplest way to clear that lot up is to power down the income, disconnect everything, and bell out every single cable with a wandering lead and label each line & neutral conductor to a known wiring standard, re fit accessories, test, and hand customer the bill... you can walk away knowing it's safe... customer is safe, installation is safe.. simple's
One interesting thing in Vietnam is that there are a lot of electricians that will try and do it to a good standard but because so many don’t they actually can’t buy things at proper connectors so twisting wise and taping up or soldering them is commonly used however the debate can be made either way about whether that safe or not because American why nuts are essentially just twisting wires together
i did my own electrics, i'm not an electrician. I just kept my mind clear. With this.... i would have janked ALL wiring OUT and would start from scratch.
Fault finding listetn to customer.split circuit in two I don't but it's best way to find fault quickly..I can usually go in and find a fault in 5 minutes.sometimes it's better to bypass fault by running new circuits.years and years ago in London it took 2 days to lift floorboards in expensive house to find broken cable,wire Would have been better to run new circuit, years later I was talking to customer no power in store room after an hour they told me contractor had done work in building and had cut pipes with wires then covered the damage up I just abandoned old work and ran new wires in 20 minutes
I have just returned from Portugal. We have been renting the same house, for a couple of weeks a year, for any years This year we found that the electric oven thermostat was not turning the heating elements off. The "Owner" asked us to remove the oven and fit a new thermostat. This was just the start of an "Eye opener" in how not to do domestic wiring The main fuse board has 5 un-labelled circuit breakers with Blue neutral and Black live wires of 2.5mm size. There were 2 off 25A and 3 off 16A circuit breakers. Since when has it been legal to fit a 25A circuit breaker to a single 2.5mm radial circuit. The kitchen and hallway were fed by the 2 off 25A circuit breakers. 1 25A circuit breaker fed the oven,4 off 15A sockets ( another small electric oven, a toaster, a fridge freezer and a coffee machine and was then "extended by a 0.75mm 2 core flex ( Note that there was NO earth connection to these 15A 3 pin sockets, to feed a freezer, a 2Kw oil filled heater, a dehumidifier and an ironing board. The other 25A circuit, still on a 2.5mm cable fed the hall way 15A socket, the washing machine, dishwasher, electric kettle and microwave and via another 0.75mm 2 core flex cable to the kitchen TV. Worse was to follow. All the lights were wired(at the fuse board) to a 16A circuit breaker. The bathroom and first bedroom were wired to another 2.5MM circuit with 16A circuit breaker. The bathroom had a 15A 3 pin socket wired via another 2 core 0.75mm flex cable fitted right above the sink and also this same 2 core cable fed an unearthed 2KW wall mounted fan heater. In the first bedroom the single 3 pin socket had been extended with yet more 2 core 0.75 mm flex cable to feed a heat pump aircon unit and 2 bedside sockets for table lights. If this was not bad enough another 3 pin socket had been added fed by 2 single core exposed 0.5mm wires the connection to this being via exposed terminal blocks.. The 2nd bedroom + living room were wired to the remaining 16A circuit. The second bedroom was wired the same with the single 15a socket extended by the same 2 core 0.75mm flex to feed the aircon unit and bed side sockets and again it has another 3 pin socket lashed in via exposed terminal blocks and 2 single core 0.5mm wires. The living was far worse as the only "proper" 3 pin socket had been extended , by yet more 2 core 0.75mm flex cable, to feed both another aircon unit and 4 more 15A 3 pin sockets. Worse still mid way on the extended run there were 2 more terminal blocks where the brown and blue wires had been crossed over. I know that people complain about the UK wiring regulations but this install must have broken virtually every rule in the book with no RCD, undersized cables and all the aircon units, fan heater, freezer, dehumidifier, ironing board and most of the bedroom and living room sockets being fed from undersized 2 core cables and NO Earth connection
I'm in Nigeria and see more electrical deaths, no earthing/grounds, and the death stick and light socket with 2 wires used. The cost of a dmm or combo volt-clamp meter is far beyond the resources of the typical tradesman. Most tradesman have no formal training but because of the survival thinking they typically have looked over someone's shoulder. 16:32
Russia seems to be the same, and at least some countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, e.g. Ukraine. Three 16-amp MCBs on a 4 mm2 Al supply split off of a 16 mm2 Al riser mains on 100 amp fuses. Yikes! No earths anywhere to be seen, even in remodels that seem decent at the first glance. I remember watching a YT video of a flat refurb where all the sockets had earths but the earth wires were just bunched up in the consumer unit.
@@Ragnar8504 It's plenty rewireable fuses still in use in the UK, were you need to change wire if fuse is blown, plenty of lighting circuits with no earth whatsoever and so on. Actually electrical distributors in UK now are replacing existing copper supply cables with cheap aluminium ones. So it's not Soviet Union who ran your electrical system down.
Go with voltpen/mnon contact tester make sure it's over 50 volts or you get readings on neutral and cause you you all kinds problems they will say 12v 50v don't buy them
if i was a developer or a house owner id Make sure any cable coming into a house there id make Red=Hot and Green - Netural from there board into mine for a home and maybe add a ground to the boxes incase they make that a legal standard
@@itiswhatitis3582 It might be some Vietnamese frying at far end of that cable Artisan trying to connect. You just not come to other country and do live electrical work without any knowledge of the local code. He is firmly against it in UK, but he doing it abroad just like that.
Twist up neutral link but if that's the approach taken it would be 100% soldered in Australia. Of course these days if you are doing this type of termination it's probably best to step back and think of how you've gotten to that position and how you can do things in a better way. Same goes for earthing.
If it's a join that doesn't need to be disconnected for any forseeable maintenance or servicing then Soldering is the best method for both conductivity , durability and corrosion and vibration resistance All well and good but how many times do the screws in cheap neutral bars etc chew up the conductors damaging and breaking off strands of wire ?? Lol when I first started off all the earth's in the switch board HAD to be soldered No such thing as an earth bar lol Lol it's a bit like conduit setting with the gas bottle instead of using shitty corrugated conduit that NEVER lasts long in the Aussie sun just gets brittle and cracks open , bending solid conduit is the only way to do the job right , takes longer but it's more robust looks better and will not be any where near as weak or brittle as corro. It seems the 'art' of setting conduit and the art of soldering correctly is becoming lost in the majority of new sparkys that just want a quick and easy way of doing things and don't care if it's not going to last till next year let alone 15 to 20 years ! Lol we used to be held accountable for work we did 3 years ago or more ( as it was recorded ) It ended up good though as my work in my buildings was good so I got to reap the rewards 😃 The only problems arose sometimes when they got contractors to refurb some areas They cut corners and even left ' surprises' bare live wires hanging down in voids a few times Plus their control / lighting stuff ups lol Like many trades some parts of electrical work rely on new gadgets and meters that the standard sparky doesnt know what it does or how it works Like every thing and any trade they should learn the basics the foundations, UNDERSTAND the principles of exactly what they are testing for and why before Playing with and relying on fancy gadgets. That way when resources are scarce in the middle of nowhere They will still have some ideas as to how to get the job done and working As well as keeping up with tech , The old skills of the job still need to be Passed on and taught . As one day they may not have the fancy gear and tech to do the job for them 🙂
@@GlenPoll-ox2hj Things change over time. Screw ends should be rounded these days, pretty sure AS says so. The old stuff did have sharp cut ends that would chew up wires and of course if you use elcheapo bars what else can one expect but to end up with non-compliant crap that does damage wires? I haven't done this stuff for nigh on 40 years now but if I can keep up to date with at least some of changes that have happened in that time someone that is actually working has no excuse.
That's some crazy stuff. Yeah wire gauge in America's weird! It confuses Americans too, usually the ones that aren't in the trade. It makes sense historically sort of.
British wire gauge starts at number 7/0, 0.5" (500 thou) as the biggest size, going down to number 50 which is 1/1000". The sizes follow an approximate exponential curve, with an average 20% reduction in WEIGHT per unit length. Dimensions are in thousands and ten thousands of an inch.
@@billdoodson4232 interesting I didn’t know the UK had a wire gauge size, I just always assumed they use the metric sizing system even though I somehow knew that they had a different sizing system before.
For those asking about the head torch you can get it for an exclusive price here unilite.co.uk/product/ht-900r/?dynamo=artisan&ref=2560
Bundy 10 😂
Amazon has a variety of head lights available for $20 or less.
Canadian electrician here, for tricky fault finding we’ll often plug a very long extension cord into a known good outlet - and use its ground/earth and neutral as reference.
In this case it would have to be the neutral.
😂 sorry but that's such a caveman way of doing things. From what I've seen you do things better than America, but the fact neither of you test installs and literally just "troubleshoot" if there is a fault is crazy to me. Literally just juice it up and wait for a fault.
@@Walktheline1991 jah,thatès how we do it lol I donèt agree with it but thatès how itès done
In my industry (Chemical/pharmaceutical manufacture) the first fault finding question was always.... "what has changed"
That assumes that it worked when it was installed.
Very good question! In this instance it may or may not lead to the cause of the fault because the fault could also be rodent or water damage, or component failure. Still a very good starting point.
Lol thats what I've always said
Especially if getting an electric shock , what was the last thing I touched and pull away from that
It's better than 'jumping' and falling off a fifteen foot ladder bringing down the whole tee bar ceiling with you
( Not a good out come)
If getting a shock what part of the light are you touching, is it the tee bar that's live? Is it the air conditioning duct behind you in the ceiling space that you leaned on ( faulty fan motor?)
Just slowly pull away from the last thing you touched and you should be right
( And most of the time no one even notices you got a shock !) Lol
They do wonder though how you knew there was a fault with the air con fan / whatever else was the fault
' it's just experience, I can tell without even looking at it '
Can't own up to getting a shock it's too much paper work !
And don't want to break an arm or leg landing on a desk and concrete floor jumping off the ladder
Rule no one of sparkies don't own up to getting a shock
Rule no 2 is don't be afraid of getting a shock
If you get a shock you get a shock
Just stay aware and stop touching the last thing you touched
I don't know why people jump so hard when they get a shock
It is you jumping up and spearing your head on a spike that's sticking thru the desk above you as you jump up , or falling of your ladder that causes more harm/ death than the shock itself most times
Was with an apprentice once he was up a ladder and got a shock while removing a self contained emergency light
( Power was off but he must have touched part of the inverter circuit LOL) up a ladder in a corridor
He went mental was looking around shouted / screamed as he punched the wall next to him !
I was like WTF????
If you get a shock just let go of it and reassess , make sure you are not still getting a shock , then carry on not touching that part again or testing with a Meter if not sure where the 'live' bit came from
I told him he had better get his shock reaction under control or one day he will end up getting fried big time when working on our larger highrise main switch boards
Funniest thing was the wall he punched ( full force) was a really old hard thick solid fibre cement wall
He cracked it and put a decent dent in the wall
But he also broke his hand / knuckles had to go to hospital and get x-rays etc
He would have fallen off the ladder too if I hadn't been stopping it from falling over as he was dancing around punching walls
I did ask him if he felt like an idiot 🤣
I told him yeah ok you got a shock ,
How the f★ck is smashing your hand and trying to fall off the ladder going to make it better?
You already got the shock
It already happened ,why add to any 'damage' done
Even the next day I asked him how his hand was bruised swollen in a cast
I had to make him aware he wasn't in any pain or anything from the shock he received.
And would have been fine right now if he hadn't hit the wall for no reason. 🤣
I live in Australia but I'm from the UK
Maybe it's the English in me
Get an electric shock
Reassess the situation
Hope no one noticed and
Just keep on working 👍🙂
Change control is very important in commercial environment.
That was the first question I asked (and always ask) the homeowner, what did you add or change? Nothing was changed, second question here is always, did it happen when it started raining? Their answer to this one was it hadn't rained for a few days before or after the fault started. So could be some rodent damage or some water leakage that took some time to develop. Haven't been back yet, so it's still a mystery and homeowner, unfortunately, is not too concerned. Even though I expressed how this can go really bad.
Comment from Germany: Perhaps I did not get everything languagewise, but my take on this problem would be first to use my signal-injector, that I normally use to find the breaker for a specific outlet, just reversed. So inject the signal at the switchboard and then go around the house with the signal-probe to find the outlet, where the injected signal can be detected. That narrows down the number of suspects.
BTW, I've seen similar if not worse installations in Brazil, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Albania, South Africa - so no Asian peculiarity.
In Albania for example they intentionally shuffle the cable colours even in secondary transformer stations, because the bad guys had quickly learned, that green-yellow never is live so you can steal that wire without getting electrocuted. Now you never know - chances are three out of five that green yellow is live 🤦♂
Cheers
Andreas
What model signal injector do you use?
Some years ago I visited Vietnam and talked with the owner of an restaurant (a old guy from UK) about my education. After i sayed that i did a school for electrical engineering, he insisted that i switch to the next seat because from there I didn't saw the open switchbox with the lose wires 😂
What?
Australian sparky here:
We almost exclusively use stranded conductors so twisting is basically commonplace. We mostly use neutral and earth bars though but every now and again I'll come across an entire installations worth of earths twisted and soldered. In Queensland we are also required to twist and solder a 6mm neutral tail for the meter neutral no matter the size of the main neutral. When we're terminating into switches, sockets or connectors - we twist all our conductors.
My "live" bus bar in the switchboard is just all lives twisted together in a screw connector block. That was done by a qualified electrician.
Aussie Sparkie
Lol meter on the pole in the street
So they can't tamper with it ,
or' innocently accidentally' tap into the mains before the meter
The supply authority finally found a great solution to stop that kind of caper!
Assuming they were an official connection and not just hard wired to to pole lines with out a Meter
LoL if they are gonna steal power there they just have to go all in straight from the street 🤣
I would have thought using an Independent earth -
a trailing lead from a screw driver stuck into a free bit if dirt outside
Would be a must on any 'confusing fault with weird unexplained live wires '
just to have a conductor with a KNOWN potential to build your fault finding logic on
( The live conductor of the mains feed in could have compromised insulation making the whole house live via concrete REO etc meaning the concrete floor they are using and assuming that its close to earth potential when it could actually be floating live and incorrectly basing all their fault finding readings off that )
It could even be The neighbour on the other side of the wall may have a fault that's livening up the building
(I have seen this done )
It's a Rookie mistake to over look and not use a true Independent earth
In any installation that is new to you ,
Don't trust anything or cable colours until you have proved it yourself using your own Independent earth
It's the best way to stay alive ( and cover your arse - so little timmy doesn't get a tingle every time he is playing in the water around the outside tap till one day he gets a good one ( shock) and drops dead meaning you spend the rest of you life in a concrete cell as you left an installation connected reverse polarity
( Although apparently Thailand probably wouldn't report it as an electrical death! so all good 👍)
In Australia using a Trailing lead from an Independent earth stake / long screw driver driven into the middle of the front yard
To prove the polarity of the incoming mains
And ensure the installation is not reverse polarity ..
At least all of the circuit breakers in the video appear to be double pole
It's more important for the final job to be 'electrically sound' than it is to look 'perfect'
Or The next sparky comes along
Fault-finding tracing wires out has to cut tons of cable ties off to trace where each wire goes
Its better for a switchboard to
look like cr★p using whatever (electrically correct) gear you can source / have ( different brands/ age etc)
It's better to be safe and perform with out any problems for years to come rather than look pretty and not work right / fail . Just because is had to ' look nice'
Performance and reliability is More important than looks
Even if it's just down to leaving enough slack in the wires for future maintenance, with minimal interruption to client . Ease of tracing wires in a full board
Its A bit hard in a full switch board when you pull on the wire you are tracing and they all move as they are all solidly cable tied together
So you Have to turn the whole board off and take it apart to reach and cut the cable ties off safely
Just to trace the wires !
Argghh !
Why are they using the MEN system if they aren't running earths through the house
The whole and only reason for joining N to general mass of earth is to provide a KNOWN given potential to be used in fault finding
And avoid 'impossible' to find faults crossing from one installation to another via water pipes concrete REO etc
As in a fault like this
In A two wire system with no reference or link to general mass of earth
If one installation has active shorted to a water pipe ( could be a toaster with an active part touching its frame placed on a metal draining board of a sink) or even just a hot water boiler
With just that
There's no issue or tripping
Untill
another installation way down the road develops a neutral fault
( short) to a water pipe
Let's say a toaster Neutral fault to its case and it's on a metal kitchen sink draining board that has taps on it
Resulting in ' nuisance' tripping at both installations
Due to current flowing between the two houses via the water pipe / general mass of earth ( especially if it's been raining - another 'random factor')
And neither can figure out why their C/b keeps tripping 'at random' when all the factors that they can't see and are in aware of align.
If the toaster is moved to a bench top next to the sink
Some one could get electrocuted just by touching the sink and the toaster, but only if the random fault is present in the first installation ( their fault could also be in their toaster etc)
That IS the only reason NEUTRAL
is tied to general mass of earth, the MEN system
To 'contain' any faults to within an installation itself.
Regardless of what happens with YOUR electrics you won't be endangering your unwitting neighbours lives
Only your own life.
yes The MEN system
CREATES a danger of getting a shock if you stand bare foot in a puddle of water and decide to touch something that is live.
But it is a KNOWN danger
That is always present it is not reliant on ifs buts and maybes that may or may not be present / happening somewhere else !
It just IS , it's a constant , a given , a known factor.
That is why an earth is required at every GPO and lighting point
Running an extra conductor to every electrical point does incur an extra cost during installation which is a down side
But it is required as a safety measure to mitigate the Danger and the
Risk of shock between live parts and earth
Introduced by using the MEN system .
When a shock is received to earth from an MEN system the fault can be identified and rectified as it is has to be local within that installation
Without the MEN system the fault could be
One of many things and 'no longer visible' as a fault in some other random installation has been removed
(Such as the faulty hot water system down the road just reached temperature and it's thermostat just turned off)
The MEN system forces the people with dodgey gear to fix it
( Makes the people with dodgey electrics aware of it by tripping THEIR own C/Bs not the neighbours )
Lol I guess rather than guessing if it's safe or if there's a danger of an electric shock
To earth , it's been made into a DEFINITE
Known danger condition ( that is great for fault finding and fault containment)
Oh and BTW
when you are in a hi rise apartment
A flower pot plant is NOT considered a good place to put Independent earth
🤣
@@GlenPoll-ox2hjno-one's reading all that fella.
@@mikeypc3592 Bit of an epic isn't it. Can't argue about the independent earth though. Reveals all if the transformer star (wye, centre) point is earthed even via high impedance. Go back to basics, establish the service polarity and work from there.
@GlenPoll-ox2hj the only thing I have time to reply to is about independent earth. Yes, it's absolutely a needed thing. I have a multifunction tester that uses 2 independent earths that I run as far from the install as possible.
In Asia, they normally embed cables (normal cable) in the concrete, and where there is land movement, cable will be pinched. I think you should check on power cable in from the meter outside
When discussing wiring with people from the US (we do it wrong so everyone else can do it better), it is simpler to use amps rather than translating physical wire sizes.
Trouble is, anywhere outside North America (at least in industrialised countries) there's no direct correspondence between physical wire size and current-carrying capacity because the latter depends on whether the wires are surrounded by air (overhead lines), buried in the ground, buried in plastered brick walls or surrounded by thermal insulation, and whether multiple cables are bundled together (heat derating). Ambient temperatures and length (voltage drop) also play a role.
One example from my recent jobs: normally 16 mm2 is good for 63 amps. However, my run is slightly over 100 m, so in order to keep voltage drop under control I had to derate to 25 amps.
@@Ragnar8504 All the derates you mentioned are a thing in the USA too.
@@retrozmachine1189 however quite often they’re not as strict in the US or other countries potentially for if this insulation over a wire make you calculate the exact value of insulation and all the wattage dissipated and do all that calculation to work out temperature rise and stuff
@@UKsystems Take a look at pretty much any country's electrical standard and it's full of tables that give the situation of the wire and the expected terminal temperature under a given load. Why do you feel it necessary to gift your peculiar type of misinformation to the world?
@@retrozmachine1189 because I mentioned various factors you did not include calculations which determine extra factors such as as far as I know in the US running in insulation would be a different current rating but in most other countries there are a lot more factors to consider in this then just one factor it gets much more technical
I wouldn't have thought there would be a "short-cut" to fault finding - in the west we have standardised installation methods which specify colour coding etc because overall it is more efficient since everyone should know what the standards are. When you don't have a standardised install each person working on an installation needs to work out what the install actually is before they can work on it - this takes time which adds to the cost and reduces efficiency. On top of this you have electrical safety to consider - we don't get nearly as many electric shocks as we used to due to better product safety design - I remember appliances my parents had and used reguarly where getting a shock off them was relatively common occurance and you soon learnt to be careful!
Watching from the US. I have completely switched to Wago. I am in the process of re-wiring my house completely, two new sub panels will feed everything and I only use Solid strand #12 to all circuits, even for 15amp circuits.
Do I like to twist wires together? Yes -- For 5V at 150mA.
I'm not an electrician & don't play with our wiring but here in Australia was watching an electrician install an extra power point ( outlet) in my garage.
He twisted wires together then inserted the twisted wires into a connector that has a screw clamping them all together.
Our power points (outlets to Americans) have terminals designed for twisted wires to be inserted then clamped with a screw.
All circuits in my house have individual Earth Leakage Protection in the switchboard. And definitely standard colours only! The wires are all multiple strands but I remember solid wires when I was younger.
Our power outlets are all plastic & look very space age vs the American outlets which look like they were designed & made in the 1950's.
How can they not have more fires with wiring like that? This is insane!!
Third world country as finest, they believe the power of God to prevent those 😂
They do have fires and deaths caused by electrics they just don't officially attribute them to electrical faults ( as would probably create too much (pointless) paper work to prove/ not prove the cause was electrical )
@@GlenPoll-ox2hj Nope. The buildings are concrete and not flammable. No fires. Plus many tropical buildings may have permanent ventilations that cannot be closed, so that any little smoke from a switchboard going up in flames will harm no one.
Do they have neutrals tied together from different branch circuits? That would explain the small changes of leak current. I would also use tone generator to trace out circuits.
Hi there, I'm from South Africa, and we do Electrical and solar on a daily basis. The way they do it here especially in new housing estate's that's is very expressive properties is chocking.them you go out into rural areas and it's even worse. There no building or any construction regulations apply.
I had to do a COC after installed a Battery backup system. But could not get proper earth reading. The saw cable coming from distribution pole. It's a black cable with a 10 mm red wire and surrounded by a earth armouring. No neutral so the n at house the connect 2 x2.5 mm surfix cables to this. So no way I can get proper earth point to complete test. I suggested to customer we fit grounding rod and Earth their DB, they said no worry we don't need COC out here.
Get a spool of wire and connect it to a known good ground. For tracing wires that are not in conduit you can use a "toner", a two piece set, one generates a warble audio frequency and it is detected by an inductivly coupled sensor. They are intended for telephone wiring troubleshooting but can be used on deenergized wires as well.
I would strip out and start again . In the uk that installation would fall and I wouldn’t bother trying to find the fault
I have found out they either put in an earth stake, especially for larger things such as apartment complexes or they rely solely on RCD protection in most installs in Vietnam
The use of double-pole breakers everywhere is interesting to see, as of all the installations I have seen in both Canada and Poland, single-pole breakers are used and the neutral does not have any disconnecting means.
I guess the one thing in your favour is the 20 sec delay before the breaker trips.
This allows you to get a decent reading off the clamp meter before the current trips off.
My step one would be to use the clamp meter to confirm there is excessive current passing through the wire to the breaker - and it's not just a faulty breaker.
Step two would be to compare the current in the feed wire to the board, with current in the neutral to the board (from DB1). if these are similar Amps, then a massive leak to earth, through the fabric of the building, is eliminated from the list of causes. However if there is a massive difference, then an earth fault is indicated as the cause of excess current. Should you suspect this discrepancy is due to a neutral current bypassing DB2, then go back to DB1 and verify.
If this all confirms the tripping is due to an overload or a short, then it's the old story of identifying the guilty conductors and tracking along them to the fault. which looks like a nightmare 🙂
Did all that and that's how I located the bad neutral. Originally they had it on the hot and assumed it was the neutral since it had all the neutrals on it. Then figured bad breaker internally. But didn't trip when all wires disconnected from breaker and isolated it to that one neutral, that was originally on the hot. When connected and that branch circuit off, there is anywhere from 500mA to 1000mA flowing on it, coming from the other circuits. Verified by measuring the return neutral on the breaker, then connecting that bad neutral and watching current drop on the breaker neutral to main panel. But where that neutral connects to the rest of the circuit, I can't find. Its in the wall or in the ceiling and homeowner does not want to start cutting holes in ceiling. Even though I explained how bad this is.
If there is a difference between hot and neutral. I would start to look at places that have earth close to it. Like pipes, water, metal doorframes, outdoor lamps/switches.
If hot and neutral carries the same current. Start to break up the circuit in the electrical boxes to find out when the breaker stops tripping.
When finding shorts on PCBs, I add external current limited power into the short and check with an IR-camera. The fault path and return path will light up and show you the way to the fault 😃
11:30 This is a big difference. Here in Finland I could safely touch any wires I see anywhere (clearly broken is a different thing and I have reported a light pole with a hanging cover once) and I won't worry when my dog walks over wagos connected to wires on the ground because I can be 100% sure those would never be live. And I regularly use my fingers to find a socket in the dark and to guide the plug in without a worry. Even my bathtub is connected to an outlet.
I live in Argentina (220-230V @ 50Hz and three phase 380V ). A lot of houses don't have a ground wire so I dont get a reference for neutral or line. I use the amp clamp in volts and check against body, if it gives me around 110V then I know it's the live wire, or the box itself if its a metallic one. For wires in junction boxes I use one of those non contact detectors (even tho my amp clamp has that function, it's too big sometimes) but it's not that reliable when having a bunch of wires all smushed togheter
It is strange how in Asia they do not use earthing so much. Even on Japan it is often not used or you may have to earth the device with a septate wire that you screw in.
Depends on where in Asia. For the ex-colonial countries ruled by the British and some of their neighbors, the plugs used are the same as the UK and the standards are very similar, including the use of earth wiring, etc.
Yes, some Asian countries have a surprising selection of double-insulated appliances, so earthing is less of a necessity. Have you ever seen a double-insulated full-sized fridge? I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a Samsung one for sale at the local Thai embassy about 20 years ago!
@@amgspd85 Here in southern India, we universally have earthing. We do have a two-pin socket standard as well.
Very cool I now know we are blessed with standards in New Zealand. Thanks to both of you stay safe
Our pleasure!
Not for long
3:30 Having just built a house in Khon Kaen, Thailand, and knowing a lot about US electrical standards, the lack of adherence to color codes drove me crazy, I was able to successfully enforce only green for ground wires though.
I have a fault on a new garage built in my garden. My basic plug tester says live neutral swapped but everything is connected correctly. If I plug somthing into a socket the consumer unit trips the moment I turn on a grinder plugged in. Are there any forums you guys advise to chat and figure out the fault thanks.
I have to say, many years ago, when I was a apprentice and working with a old hand electrician(sparky) we happened to be working in a huge house, which had a butler. whilst there we had to ok any work we did through him. On one occasion, we needed to get into the huge bathroom and asked the butler if it was ok. He said that madam was using the bathroom and would tell us when it was free. Later given the ok to go into the bathroom, the very first thing we saw was a rack across the bath with a toaster on it! The electrician called the butler and said to. him "does she realise just how dangerous that is?" "You'll have tell her yourself" said the butler. So telling madam about the danger of the toaster directly above the bath on a soap rack was, she said, "Young man I have been doing this for years!" Very lucky lady.
The question is, to what does this neutral go?
Something must not be working when you disconnect it.
So just run around put a socket tester in every outlet. Since the sockets are connected to the light switches, that should also cover most of the lighting.
It's the return for everything on that one breaker, three rooms and two floors. Everything works with that neutral disconnected, it's that good of a ground and what is scary about it.
Unfortunately it's a giant puzzle so it's going to mean starting somewhere and working until you can't work anymore. I would attempt to colorcode phase neutral but in the end I might end up just tagging lines with tape. You just have to go from one box to the next until you finish line and then rinse and repeat. I would probably replace that big bundle of twisted wires with some sort of junction block. eeeeeee
Start by getting an actual Independent earth reference on a trailing lead and start from there
Time to plug everything else back in, make that wire safe, and see what isn't working?
And what you're calling a death stick is a very commonly used tester in most of continental Europe as far as i know. I've never had , or heard of a problem with one.
Unless some smart a★rse decides to be 'funny' and replace the resistor or bypass it with a thin strand of wire.
Or swapping it for a 12v auto test screwdriver
It has been done in the past.
You can only hope that the fear of prosecution would stop them in todays work environment as that kind of behaviour wouldn't be tolerated and there's an expectation for any 'prankster' putting lives at risk to be severely reprimanded.
Still if they are stupid enough to do it
There's no guarantee other than banning the neon test screwdrivers altogether
In my part of India, every household has a death stick on hand, not just the electricians. Never heard of any incidents with one ever.
There is no way companies like Wera would include test screwdrivers in thier screwdriver sets if they were dangerous.
I have known them to go wrong, but nobody gets killed.
You alway check it's working before relying on its readings, unless you're an idiot.
There is no tool that's not dangerous in the hands of an idiot.
No wonder they get the polarity wrong if there is no standard colours 🤷♂️that alone is the most crazy thing in my eyes
They use whatever’s in the van, doesn’t matter what colour it is or what size it is.
Back in the 50s and even early 60s quite a few European countries didn't believe in wire colours either. I've seen installations with all wires (except earths) the same colour or different colours for each circuit but both wires of each circuit the same colour. Probably didn't conform even back then but people did it. A friend of mine used to live in a place like that. All circuits were 1.5 mm2, lighting #1 was two whites, lightning #2 was two purples, sockets #1 was two yellows and a red earth, sockets #2 was two dark blues and a red and sockets #3 was two browns and a red I think. Built in 1960. 10 amp MCBs that were completely useless, once we had a short in a floor lamp and it blew the 20 A bottle fuse outside the flat rather than tripping the MCB. Someone thankfully bodged in an RCD (TT supply) but that was the only upgrade in five decades. Eventually the place saw a full rewire.
It's the same here in India. The reason is that usually the customer buys the wires, and any excess is waste, so the electrician just uses whatever is remaining to finish the work. Sometimes they use colored insulating tape to indicate polarity.
It's only when you go to other countries do you realise ,how advanced The British electrical system is, especially each plug have its own fuse,
Each plug having it's own fuse is due to us having 30A ring ccts. In Spain all the socket groups are spares on a 15A breaker so don't need plug fuses. They have a duel plug system of big round sockets for heavy appliances max 15A and the 7A low power things can also plug into them. The 7 A sockets tend to be 2 pin with only the larger sockets having an earth. If your appliance has to be earthed use the larger plug. Also RCDs on every spare is now common.
The plug fuses would be entirely unnecessary if the British didn't have 32 A socket circuits. If socket circuits were limited to 16 or 20 amps, as they are elsewhere, fused plugs would offer very little benefit. Doing away with them would mean no more fire risks with illegally imported unfused plugs or adaptors, no more easter egg hunts for blown fuses and no more fire risk with broken ring circuits and no risk of DIYers "repairing" fuses with tin foil.
@@Ragnar8504 you answer your own question, illegal plugs , British have a kite mark plug , And a fuse because they have 34 amp circuits , I would prefer to hear a 13 amp fuse pop in the plug then, get 2000 watts up my arm and down my leg,
@@davidchamberlain2162 true but fuse in plug , and fuse in box RCD , gives a line of protection,
Yes, very advanced. So advanced that it's still not mandatory to have a dedicated electrode on your PME supplies. Even more alarmingly no electrode of any type at all, not incidental via plumbing bonds, nothing at all, if the situation meets. Tell that to anyone from another country that implements TN-C-S earthing and watch their jaw drop in disbelief...
Now this is not to say UK electrical is terribly deficient but calling it advanced is a bit of a fairytale too.
Oh the life of the traveling electrician! It's fine until a friend says, "oh, Daves an electrician". Gee, thanks! Sheer bravery in action! Good luck guys.
So true!
@@artisanelectrics Do you have Vietnamese electrical license to do electrical work over there?
Do they eveb have one @@AAaa-wu3el
@@AAaa-wu3eldo they even have licences?
On the plus side
No matter what work you do ( or possibly how bad the work you do is )
When you leave it won't be any worse than when you started 🙂
The mentality is if it's doing what they want it to do
Then it must be ok
A little bit like the home wifi routers when they first came out
They plug it, find and connect to their wifi router and just use it
With no protection
So anyone could connect to it and use it .
Ahh , the clients famous last words -
'but It's working so it must be all right '
Lol
Same mentality
Everything is good , - until it isnt
Altho wifi isn't likely to burn your house down or kill you lol
Irish Electrician here who has recently moved to Canada, No.6 would be 13.3mm Cable, also the practice of twisting wires & using wire nuts still annoy me I feel as I’m doing something wrong every time I do it over here!
Wire nuts work quite well if used properly but they're amazingly labour intensive, which might be why they never caught on in most parts of Europe (the Dutch, Portuguese, Italians and Swedish used loads of them before Wagos became a thing).
I can't stand wire twist nuts
I've never had any good experience with them
( Went to a job , discovered some one previously used them but the
Insulated cover part of the nuts had fallen off leaving the 'springs' on the twisted wires that were now live and exposed
I will never use them
Twist the wires and solder and tape them
OR. twist the wires together and put them in a loose single Insulated connector and securely tighten the terminal screw to secure the wires and tape it
I use Screwed terminal 'bp connectors'
Nothing worse than when your nuts fall off
- your wire joins 😂
Overcurrent or short circuit. Does it trip straight away or does it take a while? Unplug every appliance and turn on to make sure it's not an appliance. If it works with everything unplugged then plug everything back in one thing at a time until it trips. If not appliance, then leave everything unplugged again and find out what that actually feeds. It might be quicker to run another cable through if thats a conduit I see there!!!
He mentioned 20 seconds, so it has to be the thermal trip but a fairly substantial current, so a low-impedance earth fault but no dead short. I think they already disconnected all portable loads and this circuit still tripped.
It's a conduit but without knowing where the other end is you can't replace the wires. You could try blowing compressed air into the conduit and spotting the whistling noise at the other end but if the conduit is only in the wall and loose wires above the suspended ceiling that won't help a whole lot.
I seen metal sink, it should have metal faucet and pipes that go into ground, even plastic pipes full of water are good enough for AC groud path, test with meter to faulty wire and sink. Maybe there is wired in warer heater or furnace, or some large applience i seen, that is not on sockets. Or the wire is dammaged in the wall touching some other screw or metal, appearing like grounded. Wish ya success on the adventure.
Can't really Use metal sink or hot water system as an Independent earth reference untill you prove it ,as there could be a water pipe bond to what they thought was earth / neutral ( or polarity swapped after it was done) or hot water sys etc could be down to earth / frame making all the taps/ sinks live
You Need an Independent earth from the yard (so that you know without any doubt that it is earth potential,) with a trailing lead to test polarity , if for nothing else to test taps and sinks etc and make sure they are not live ate all
Water pipes can be live and if they are unfortunate and a water pipe joins bursts you can get arcing ( that you can see at night at least) across in the escaping water from one pipe to the other
I have seen it when all of these unlikely events occured at the same time.( Neutral burnt off at point of entry so the massive load of industrial cooking equipment being used was returning to earth/ neutral in the street via the water pipes)
I don't know if the pipe join had issues before and was going to break anyway or if the electric current found it as a high resistance created a hot spot and melted solder or something?
Either way seeing I guy standing in a puddle of water being sprayed with water attempting to stop the leak while you could see flashes of light in the water around the pipes
Was the worst thing I have ever seen , he was so lucky he didn't die.
( It was at a restaurant and lounge was p★ssed as a f★rt)
I was shouting at him to get away from it I wasn't going to go near him ( I was p1$$ed not stupid)
And Turn the bl★★dy power off
And then turn water off/ tackle the burst pipe.
They had to shut the restaurant down for the night till it was fixed so the owner was upset so asked them would they rather lose one nights business or have someone get electrocuted and a coroners investigation
Requiring the evidence to stay as is until fully recorded etc meaning the restaurant remaining closed for the duration .
Faced with that the owner did the right thing
( Plus I told them I had to demand access to their switch board to turn the mains off ) otherwise I could be held liable for any injury/ death
Even tho it was nothing to do with me (and I was p★$$ed as ) as I saw a dangerous situation that I knew could easily be deadly and the clowns were literally playing with their lives.
Fun times 😃
Why not use coloured pvc tape to mark the wires plurality as you work from the main feed in?
What is lighting cable. 1.5mm2 can easily be used for up to 16A
Depends on the country. In Poland, the limit on 1.5mm2 cable is 14A in many circumstances.
@@A_Canadian_In_Poland Physics dont change in Poland. There is certain factors to calculate how much the cable can take and most of the time 1.5mm2 is fine for 16A
16:30 I just got back from a holiday in the Philippines, over there they seem to have an electrical shower hooked up in the bathroom under the sink, so the shower heater will feed hot water to the sink, the shower and a bidet which is like a mini shower head. could be a better way for those Vietnamese people possibly..
Even as a DIYer, I know from experience those neon screwdrivers are death traps. They can have false negatives, and more commonly - false positives (which then leads you to assume it's wrong all the time and work on the circuit despite the neon glowing a bit).
thats actually great work for me to do coz i love to do everything 100% right and save i wouldn't mind to go there and show them how its done
nwonder what u do for ground in sand and bedrock situations?
What's RCD?
Hello i am from Western Australia i am an apprentice electrician and really love watching these unformative videos.
I meant informative
Honestly the most difficult and confusing fault find I have ever tackled - in Vietnam. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
It's similar here in the Philippines - however it's 220v 2 phase - no neutral - and unless you put your own earth rod in - there is no earth. All the connections in the roof space are just twisted together - even the high amp lines for an oven or an air con. All the wiring in my house is green. No colour coding - nothing.
You can find the similar things in England, where this guy from.
Everything wired in black with twist & tape splices is the most common in the Philippines. Electricians do usually wire more systematically here than that example from Vietnam.
When building our own house, I did all the wiring according to the Philippine Electrical Code using the prescribed colors and WAGOs for splices.
I had to order the wires via Lazada as local hardwares often did not have all the colors I was using: 1st phase - black, 2nd phase - red, earth - green. Wagos were ordered from Amazon US.
Colored electrical tape can be used to mark wires in the official colors on both ends, if the hardware stores do not have the right colors available. UL listed American wire nuts are available from Wilcon.
@@ChristianWagner888 it's a sign that nobody is paying attention to the standards when the local electrical store doesn't even stock the appropriately coloured wires and connectors. Blimey.
I hope you have good insurance.
Lol
5:22 - no, soldering may give the impression of a better joint, however given enough current the solder can melt which can cause all sorts of problems.
Since I've been qualified to test, I've never even considered twisting any cables together, as an apprentice many moons ago I have been quilty of twisting cpc together to share earth sleeving! I cringe at my early bad habits 😂
its easy to forget that most of what we do in the US/UK for wiring is for safety. if you just ignore safety rules, then you can get pretty wild and creative and it will still work just fine. it will just not be as safe
Formally trained Croatian electricians seem to love twisting and taping multiple wires together. Well at least it seems common in older apartments.
Hello from Rockledge Florida keep up the good work
They never run grounds to residential lighting fixtures in Thailand, even of the fixture has a ground wire or ground screw.
If there is a difference between hot and neutral currents. I would start to look at places that have earth close to it. Like pipes, water, metal doorframes, outdoor lamps/switches.
If hot and neutral carries the same current. Start to break up the circuit in the electrical boxes to find out when the breaker stops tripping.
When finding shorts on PCBs, I add external, current limited, power into the short and check with an IR-camera. The fault path and return path will light up and show you the way to the fault 😃
That's basically what I did with the amp clamp. Since I knew I had 500 to 1000mA on that neutral in the board, I went to every switch, receptacle, box etc... that is on that circuit to check for the same current, but was unable to see that 500 to 1000mA anywhere. So the fault is somewhere before it gets to any of the boxes. The attic is unaccessible and it's concrete and brick walls. So trying to find where that circuit splits to feed everything is the problem. Owner does not want to start cutting holes in the ceiling or knocking holes in the walls.
Just seen your comment, my garage light has done that since we moved in and the t tubes always glow...worrying..... Not my wiring but I will be annoying you re wiring it myself top to bottom. Had to re wire it to move it as I'm doing a full renovation and its a birds nest, believe me it cant get any worse.
the wiring I saw and used in Vietnam was like a fever dream.
I was, and I will twist cables. No shitty wagos needed to burn down my house, or houses I'm wiring/fixing.. My entire country used twisting method for decades, and generally without fire caused by them. Before you judge, don't forget that the US uses the same way to make junctions. There is the current double according to Europe, because of the half voltage. I saw many twistings, and asked myself, how on earth they did not burnt the house.
Fault finding: connect appliances one by one, with a timeframe longer than usual tripping time.
what is the problem with twisting wires?
That is true Tony and the business I was in this was always the case but I understand that everything is not always like this.
I am a US Electrician, Jordan. All I can say is what I see. What a mess, and so dangerous! Vietnam Electrical looks nasty. Love your videos, Thanks for sharing, Russ, 28 years in the Trade.
My wera screwdriver set came with a “death screwdriver” they are ok if you have to prove a live core with no neutral or earth but you have to make sure your not touching anything to earth which is where things go wrong
Why? they work even better if you touch earth
It used to work and than it stopped, I would assume someone hang something on the wall or something..ask owner if there was any drilling recently.
Yeah that was the first question we asked - unfortunately it wasn’t that easy but it’s a great place to start
Everybody who have not tried programming, this captures exactly how it feels to read code written by somebody else.
hahahaha lol😂
Same here in Brazil, no real color code followed just whatever they have and they twist wires like crazy. here I think its a cost issue if they can save a penny they will
Exactly,! Here in Paraná interior we have bi voltage mains supply,127/220v tomadas (wall outlet sockets) are, identical for each voltage. Where many things like phone Chargers/laptop chargers are multi voltage now, things like fridges, microwaves, air con units are not!
i'm not qualified but have some electical and diagnostic knowledge and i would resort to using what used to be called "belling out " equipment to send a signal in a cable and trace it. This is such a mess hahahahah. We used to use this device to trace twisted pair phone and networking cable throughout office blocks and i'm sure it would work here.
An interesting video, but what was the resolution, abandon it and run?
Haven't been back yet, homeowner isn't concerned. Even though I stressed how bad this can end up.
Be interesting to see a Vietnamese electrician going to UK or USA to look at their electrics. (so the reverse of this, as such)
That lad has a big heart!
Do you think a Signal toner
Would work to trace an unknown wire ?
Probably yes, unless the wires are too deep inside the concrete. The neutral-earth short might affect the tracer though, not 100% sure if they work with one of the wires earthed.
Well you weren't much help tracing this fault.I like to use a tone tester for speed.narrows down what is actually on this leg or where the break is.Strange voltage are normally a broken neutral
Looks a real challenge, I'd love to go and spark there instead of the UK.
Whilst it looks horrifying, I do wonder statistically how many people get killed from bad electrics!?
I believe they use this type of meter box because meter tampering would be very common here otherwise if you think about the electrical system state shoving a couple of screws in wires would probably be peoples first thought
Wow,,what an eye opener! Ian's YT link?
In the description
Whilst you were having a six month break in and around Thailand, I’m sure John’s not bitter.
My money is with the issue being a reversed Line and Neutral inside one of the appliances. I recall a Washing Machine that was produced with the Line having resistance to earth and the Neutral inside the Washing Machine being connected to Line.
Im off to do some EICR's in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manilla, Indonesia and Maldives next month. Bet its fking to be interesting
Lucky duck
Simplest way to clear that lot up is to power down the income, disconnect everything, and bell out every single cable with a wandering lead and label each line & neutral conductor to a known wiring standard, re fit accessories, test, and hand customer the bill... you can walk away knowing it's safe... customer is safe, installation is safe.. simple's
Wheres the Wago's.. they need more Wago's.. lol
What qualifications & electrical competence requirements are required to work on electrical installations? None by the looks of it.
Fascinating.... Great job!
Glad you enjoyed it!
One interesting thing in Vietnam is that there are a lot of electricians that will try and do it to a good standard but because so many don’t they actually can’t buy things at proper connectors so twisting wise and taping up or soldering them is commonly used however the debate can be made either way about whether that safe or not because American why nuts are essentially just twisting wires together
i did my own electrics, i'm not an electrician. I just kept my mind clear. With this.... i would have janked ALL wiring OUT and would start from scratch.
I wouldn’t want to work on that sort of crazy wiring practice, bad enough here even with proper standards
21:58 Brother, there is a reason why he is bald LOL
The very first domestic electricity cabling was all just loosely twisted or folded together
Very dry ground makes it hard to make a good local earth grounding.
Makes you afraid to go near any neutral let alone any metal parts of anything.
Very true
@@artisanelectrics
👍
Would scares the hell out of me.
Fault finding listetn to customer.split circuit in two
I don't but it's best way to find fault quickly..I can usually go in and find a fault in 5 minutes.sometimes it's better to bypass fault by running new circuits.years and years ago in London it took 2 days to lift floorboards in expensive house to find broken cable,wire
Would have been better to run new circuit, years later I was talking to customer no power in store room after an hour they told me contractor had done work in building and had cut pipes with wires then covered the damage up
I just abandoned old work and ran new wires in 20 minutes
32 amps is amazing!Except when there is a low voltage..We have standard 230 volt-16 amp.
Capacitance on two way circuits can cause LED lamps to light dimly when off.
Or leakage thru the switch
Green gunk / black oily conductive contaminants in the switch contacts 'grease'
I experienced that phenomena with two way wiring - under 4m in length
yes i had that had to fit a relay to isolate the lights when the light where off@@BrainW33a
Awesome video.....😊
Canada also uses the same wire gauge as the US even though we are supposed to be metric.
I have just returned from Portugal. We have been renting the same house, for a couple of weeks a year, for any years
This year we found that the electric oven thermostat was not turning the heating elements off.
The "Owner" asked us to remove the oven and fit a new thermostat.
This was just the start of an "Eye opener" in how not to do domestic wiring
The main fuse board has 5 un-labelled circuit breakers with Blue neutral and Black live wires of 2.5mm size.
There were 2 off 25A and 3 off 16A circuit breakers. Since when has it been legal to fit a 25A circuit breaker to a single 2.5mm radial circuit.
The kitchen and hallway were fed by the 2 off 25A circuit breakers. 1 25A circuit breaker fed the oven,4 off 15A sockets ( another small electric oven, a toaster, a fridge freezer and a coffee machine and was then "extended by a 0.75mm 2 core flex ( Note that there was NO earth connection to these 15A 3 pin sockets, to feed a freezer, a 2Kw oil filled heater, a dehumidifier and an ironing board.
The other 25A circuit, still on a 2.5mm cable fed the hall way 15A socket, the washing machine, dishwasher, electric kettle and microwave and via another 0.75mm 2 core flex cable to the kitchen TV.
Worse was to follow.
All the lights were wired(at the fuse board) to a 16A circuit breaker.
The bathroom and first bedroom were wired to another 2.5MM circuit with 16A circuit breaker.
The bathroom had a 15A 3 pin socket wired via another 2 core 0.75mm flex cable fitted right above the sink and also this same 2 core cable fed an unearthed 2KW wall mounted fan heater.
In the first bedroom the single 3 pin socket had been extended with yet more 2 core 0.75 mm flex cable to feed a heat pump aircon unit and 2 bedside sockets for table lights.
If this was not bad enough another 3 pin socket had been added fed by 2 single core exposed 0.5mm wires the connection to this being via exposed terminal blocks..
The 2nd bedroom + living room were wired to the remaining 16A circuit.
The second bedroom was wired the same with the single 15a socket extended by the same 2 core 0.75mm flex to feed the aircon unit and bed side sockets and again it has another 3 pin socket lashed in via exposed terminal blocks and 2 single core 0.5mm wires.
The living was far worse as the only "proper" 3 pin socket had been extended , by yet more 2 core 0.75mm flex cable, to feed both another aircon unit and 4 more 15A 3 pin sockets.
Worse still mid way on the extended run there were 2 more terminal blocks where the brown and blue wires had been crossed over.
I know that people complain about the UK wiring regulations but this install must have broken virtually every rule in the book with no RCD, undersized cables and all the aircon units, fan heater, freezer, dehumidifier, ironing board and most of the bedroom and living room sockets being fed from undersized 2 core cables and NO Earth connection
Sounds like here in Brazil, it's not only language we share!
I'm in Nigeria and see more electrical deaths, no earthing/grounds, and the death stick and light socket with 2 wires used. The cost of a dmm or combo volt-clamp meter is far beyond the resources of the typical tradesman. Most tradesman have no formal training but because of the survival thinking they typically have looked over someone's shoulder. 16:32
Good work ❤.
Can a neutral-to-earth fault cause high electricity bills (no RCD in the consumer unit )?
I hope you will answer my question.
No, but it could kill you if you don’t have neutral to earth.
@@tujuprojects thank you
No, that takes a Conservative government,
Welcome to asia..... you should see it here in Philippines...... most of the time no ground and 2 black wire on way over size breaker
Russia seems to be the same, and at least some countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union, e.g. Ukraine. Three 16-amp MCBs on a 4 mm2 Al supply split off of a 16 mm2 Al riser mains on 100 amp fuses. Yikes! No earths anywhere to be seen, even in remodels that seem decent at the first glance. I remember watching a YT video of a flat refurb where all the sockets had earths but the earth wires were just bunched up in the consumer unit.
@@Ragnar8504 It's plenty rewireable fuses still in use in the UK, were you need to change wire if fuse is blown, plenty of lighting circuits with no earth whatsoever and so on. Actually electrical distributors in UK now are replacing existing copper supply cables with cheap aluminium ones.
So it's not Soviet Union who ran your electrical system down.
Go with voltpen/mnon contact tester make sure it's over 50 volts or you get readings on neutral and cause you you all kinds problems they will say 12v 50v don't buy them
if i was a developer or a house owner id Make sure any cable coming into a house there id make
Red=Hot and Green - Netural from there board into mine for a home
and maybe add a ground to the boxes incase they make that a legal standard
I still have my father's probably 50 year old death sticks. And they still work. :D
From the USA here.... What a mess there! 🤦♂🤷♂
Can imagine Vietnamese tourist in London were doing fault finding in some Chinese owned Park Lane hotel. What would Artisan say, I wonder.
What.are you trying to make a problem out off nothing
@@itiswhatitis3582 It might be some Vietnamese frying at far end of that cable Artisan trying to connect. You just not come to other country and do live electrical work without any knowledge of the local code. He is firmly against it in UK, but he doing it abroad just like that.
Twist up neutral link but if that's the approach taken it would be 100% soldered in Australia. Of course these days if you are doing this type of termination it's probably best to step back and think of how you've gotten to that position and how you can do things in a better way. Same goes for earthing.
If it's a join that doesn't need to be disconnected for any forseeable maintenance or servicing then
Soldering is the best method for both conductivity , durability and corrosion and vibration resistance
All well and good but how many times do the screws in cheap neutral bars etc chew up the conductors damaging and breaking off strands of wire ??
Lol when I first started off all the earth's in the switch board HAD to be soldered
No such thing as an earth bar lol
Lol it's a bit like conduit setting with the gas bottle instead of using shitty corrugated conduit that NEVER lasts long in the Aussie sun just gets brittle and cracks open , bending solid conduit is the only way to do the job right , takes longer but it's more robust looks better and will not be any where near as weak or brittle as corro.
It seems the 'art' of setting conduit and the art of soldering correctly is becoming lost in the majority of new sparkys that just want a quick and easy way of doing things and don't care if it's not going to last till next year let alone 15 to 20 years !
Lol we used to be held accountable for work we did 3 years ago or more ( as it was recorded )
It ended up good though as my work in my buildings was good so I got to reap the rewards 😃
The only problems arose sometimes when they got contractors to refurb some areas
They cut corners and even left
' surprises' bare live wires hanging down in voids a few times
Plus their control / lighting stuff ups lol
Like many trades some parts of electrical work rely on new gadgets and meters that the standard sparky doesnt know what it does or how it works
Like every thing and any trade they should learn the basics the foundations, UNDERSTAND the principles of exactly what they are testing for and why before
Playing with and relying on fancy gadgets.
That way when resources are scarce in the middle of nowhere
They will still have some ideas as to how to get the job done and working
As well as keeping up with tech ,
The old skills of the job still need to be Passed on and taught .
As one day they may not have the fancy gear and tech to do the job for them 🙂
@@GlenPoll-ox2hj Things change over time. Screw ends should be rounded these days, pretty sure AS says so. The old stuff did have sharp cut ends that would chew up wires and of course if you use elcheapo bars what else can one expect but to end up with non-compliant crap that does damage wires?
I haven't done this stuff for nigh on 40 years now but if I can keep up to date with at least some of changes that have happened in that time someone that is actually working has no excuse.
@@retrozmachine1189 exactly 👍
That's some crazy stuff. Yeah wire gauge in America's weird! It confuses Americans too, usually the ones that aren't in the trade.
It makes sense historically sort of.
It probably made sense to the people who manufactured wires back in the day but not to anyone else. Same as sheet metal gauge.
British wire gauge starts at number 7/0, 0.5" (500 thou) as the biggest size, going down to number 50 which is 1/1000". The sizes follow an approximate exponential curve, with an average 20% reduction in WEIGHT per unit length. Dimensions are in thousands and ten thousands of an inch.
@@billdoodson4232 interesting I didn’t know the UK had a wire gauge size, I just always assumed they use the metric sizing system even though I somehow knew that they had a different sizing system before.