On vacation in Italy last year, one evening a part of the ~5 y.o. streetlamps along a sidewalk on the beach went dark. The next day, two italian sparkies started digging sand away just at our beach place, where one light's pole was placed. I was really amused by what came up. about 1,5 feet deep there was a concrete plate, they removed it, and under there was a small "box" about 1x1x1 ft. looked like made of concrete too, at the bottom was wet sand.

Their splice was 3-phase+n+GND AWG10 or 12 coming and going, and one 1phase+N+GND off to the lamp.
It was just taped!! A specific water-tight box would be prescribed here, at least in GErmany.

so guess how thes fixed it (two wires had shorted in the taped splice).
just opened up everything, and crimped it into ferrules (never seen that type of connection).
tjey just crimped the supply line and the lamp's wires into one side of the ferrule, and the line to the other lamps into the ferrule's other side. Tape-n-done. no more u-boats or anything.
and i was like [Linked Image] , see you again next year.......


I tried to ask them how they located the fault just under this lamp, as they hadn't digged up anywhere else, but neither the ~40y.o. nor the ~20y.o. spook one word of english...


i wouldn't want to live there, unless i'd have my house installed by myself.
i once saw an outdoor splice box, where they did the only-pretwist job... just twisted stranded wires, but no wirenut had ever been there, tape again. hell.




[This message has been edited by :andy: (edited 04-12-2004).]