ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades How not to wire a junction box

I guess that to anyone who's grown up with a certain system, any other foreign ways seem strange at first. But, yes, Britain is rather the odd man out on some things -- Fused plugs, ring circuits, etc. (I was going to add driving on the left, but then more places than you might think do that, including, I believe, the U.S. Virgin Islands!)

John,
I'm on the Norfolk coast at the moment, but I've lived in various places around England, spent time working out in the States (Nebraska), and I'm still thinking about expatriating again to somewhere with cheaper housing and better weather!

Paul,
I also remember the same sparkie mentioning
a wiring system used in the UK,around the
1960's, he called it the Octopus, it was
used in housing developments where every house was the same, but he said that the down-fall of this system was if the labels had been removed from the wires.
It featured a large junction box up in the
roof void, and everything was taken from there.
Have you ever seen one of these systems, in any of the houses you have worked in.

Trumpy,
I've seen "Octopus" wiring once, at least I think that was what it was.
The house was built in 1960 and when I rewired it (1999) I found a large metal JB under the 1st floor landing with power & lighting cables in it. The cables were TRS (tough rubber sheathed), lighting cables unearthed, as was common in that era.
Cables (labelled) radiated from this box to each switch & light on the ground floor, also to power points on 1st floor (I think that corrupted the ring main, but i'm not going down that thread again!) , bathroom heater & shaver point.
The real shocker was you needed to pull 3 fuses to isolate this JB.
Not a great system in my opinion.

Incidentally in this part of the world, when we use a JB system for lighting (normally only on rewires nowadays) we tend to take most of the cables for each circuit to 1 central adaptable box. Individual JB's for each light & switch are not the norm.

Yes, David, that is the Octopus system, complete with TRS cables, glad that they do
not use wiring systems like that anymore.
I have come across some systems like this
over in New Zealand here, but this can be attributed more to DIY work than a standard system.

I can't say I've ever come across the "Octopus" system, but then most of the houses I work on in this area are not the types that are likely to have been fitted with it.