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when the owner had extended his milking shed the prat had cut the e/c to the building's rod array "It was in the way..."
Had that on a nearby house a while ago (there's a thread I mentioned it in somewhere, but might take some finding now).

The guy built a new brick shell around the outside of his pre-fab unit and did a lot of his own wiring changes inside. Then he asked me to go change the old panel with rewireable fuses for a modern MCB unit and RCD.

When I tested I couldn't get anything on the main earthing lead, traced it back to where it went through the original wall to the rod. At that point the owner said, "Oh yes, I remember now, I hacksawed that through because the cable and rod were in the way." [Linked Image] He'd been running like that for several months.

I'm digressing somewhat now, but I went back there twice more. Can't remember which way round these incidents were now, but one was because the RCD kept tripping. Traced it to a neutral-earth short on the shower circuit and then discovered he'd wired from the pull switch to the shower in 2.5 cable. The connection at the switch had overheated and melted the insulation, resulting in the short.

The other incident was when he came to putting up the plasterboard on his newly installed roof joists. He'd left all the cables hanging under the new timbers and then went round notching the underside of the joists for them. The meter in this house was in a hallway closet about halfway back along the house, so the main incoming service cable actually ran about 20 ft. through the roof.

Yep, you know what's coming right? That was one that he tried to put into one of his notches and ended up sinking a plasterboard screw right into it. Told me the lights dimmed and there was "One hell of a bang!" [Linked Image]

He couldn't have gotten closer to dead center if he tried, and the end of the screw was completely vaporized, as you'd expect. He's lucky that it was a concentric neutral cable.

Told him the bad news that he'd have to call the PoCo for that one. Cost him over £300 in the end!