Post by PeterW on Apr 23, 2011 17:48:02 GMT -5
We had a spot of excitement here yesterday evening. Suddenly the lights started flickering before all the household electrics went dead.
When Wendy opened the meter cupboard there was smoke and a smell of burning, but very fortunately no flame.
She switched off at the distribution fuse box but the smoke, which seemed to be coming from the main suppy fuse box, had started to die down. She grabbed a fire extinguisher but as the smoke had almost cleared and there was still no flame, she didn't use it.
We buy our electricity from British Gas. I know that sounds silly, but there is no longer a monopoly on energy supply and they are the cheapest electricity supplier if you buy both gas and electricity from them. We have a maintenance and repair contract with them, so we phoned their emergency number and they promised to get an engineer to us as soon as possible.
John was out at the time picking up a friend who is staying with us over Easter. By the time he returned we had sent young Luke off to spend the night with some friends up the road, just in case.
By now it was getting very dark, so after satisfying himself there was no immediate danger of fire, John rigged up a portable petrol-driven electric generator we use for camping to one of his big soft-box lights he uses for making videos and we sat in the breakfast room drinking coffee until the engineer turned up.
He took a look, and said that as there wasn't an isolating switch for the main supply fuse box he would have to get the energy supply company to come along and turn off the main supply into the house.
This he did, and they turned up after about half an hour. They apologised to our next-door neighbour that shutting off our house would also shut off their house, but the neighbour was very nice about it and asked if we needed any help.
We didn't, and after about half an hour the engineers had fitted a new main supply box and we were back to normal. They showed us the old box which was well and truly cooked. It was a twisted mess inside, but they found what might have been a poor connection which they thought must have been arcing like a welder for quite a few seconds before the main supply fuse blew. Regulations say that this box must be mounted on a fireproof board which scorched, but didn't catch fire. Sensible regulation!
John and I were concerned that two of our computers, and our router, had been on at the time, but they are fed through anti-spike devices and seem to have suffered no harm.
So all's well that ends well.
Luke's only comment when he returned this morning was that he had "missed all the fun".
PeterW
When Wendy opened the meter cupboard there was smoke and a smell of burning, but very fortunately no flame.
She switched off at the distribution fuse box but the smoke, which seemed to be coming from the main suppy fuse box, had started to die down. She grabbed a fire extinguisher but as the smoke had almost cleared and there was still no flame, she didn't use it.
We buy our electricity from British Gas. I know that sounds silly, but there is no longer a monopoly on energy supply and they are the cheapest electricity supplier if you buy both gas and electricity from them. We have a maintenance and repair contract with them, so we phoned their emergency number and they promised to get an engineer to us as soon as possible.
John was out at the time picking up a friend who is staying with us over Easter. By the time he returned we had sent young Luke off to spend the night with some friends up the road, just in case.
By now it was getting very dark, so after satisfying himself there was no immediate danger of fire, John rigged up a portable petrol-driven electric generator we use for camping to one of his big soft-box lights he uses for making videos and we sat in the breakfast room drinking coffee until the engineer turned up.
He took a look, and said that as there wasn't an isolating switch for the main supply fuse box he would have to get the energy supply company to come along and turn off the main supply into the house.
This he did, and they turned up after about half an hour. They apologised to our next-door neighbour that shutting off our house would also shut off their house, but the neighbour was very nice about it and asked if we needed any help.
We didn't, and after about half an hour the engineers had fitted a new main supply box and we were back to normal. They showed us the old box which was well and truly cooked. It was a twisted mess inside, but they found what might have been a poor connection which they thought must have been arcing like a welder for quite a few seconds before the main supply fuse blew. Regulations say that this box must be mounted on a fireproof board which scorched, but didn't catch fire. Sensible regulation!
John and I were concerned that two of our computers, and our router, had been on at the time, but they are fed through anti-spike devices and seem to have suffered no harm.
So all's well that ends well.
Luke's only comment when he returned this morning was that he had "missed all the fun".
PeterW
