UKC

Dear All,

I wonder if anyone has any advice about who I should speak to?

I have just ventured into my loft for the first time. This is a 1900s mid terrace.

There is a thick brown insulated cable running from the corner of the house where the mains electricity enters across the loft and through the wall into the neighbouring mid terrace. Upon inspection there is no visible external mains feed into their house so I surmise that is what the mystery cable is.

Throwing our trip switch leaves the neighbours lights on whilst our meter stops clicking up, so I assume that their power feed splits off before the meter. This means the split is burried in a wall somewhere.

So it's all kosher I assume, but it worried me to have an ancient, un-isolatable mains feed running right across my loft. There is nothing in the deeds about the cable. I want to put a lot more insulation down but seriously doubt the wisdom of doing so over a cable like this...!

Has anyone had a situation like this? I assume I don't own the cable - who does? Can I request to have it taken out? Would it cost me? Any guesses how old it is?

Any comments anyone can shed on this would be appreciated.

In reply to wintertree:

On the plus side, you now know where to pick up the feed for the hydroponics rig.

In reply to butteredfrog:


Funnily enough most of the web pages I have come across whilst goggling for pointers seem to involve hydroponics in the loft. Whilst an innovative solution to the problem that would not help allay my fears over fire hazards etc.

In reply to wintertree:
To get my head round it:

Your electricity feed (and the neighbours by the sound of it) is an overhead feed from a pole to insulators fastened to the wall of your house below the edge of the roof?

Whereabouts is your meter?

*not a sparkie by the way, but the next door neighbour is, can soon ask him*

In reply to butteredfrog:

Almost. It is an overhead feed from the pylon to the top of the external wall of the neighbour's - about 1 foot away from where their wall becomes my wall.

It appears to be an insulated cable for its entire length and does not attach to much more than some clips on the neighbours house.

The feed does not enter their house, but runs across to my wall and then all the way across my wall to the other side of my property. It then runs down the wall into a cupboard in my property where the meter is located.

It looks like there must be a split behind the wooden board upon which my primary fuse, trip switch and fuse box are mounted, from which the mystery brown cable must then rise up inside the wall of my property to the loft, from which it runs all the way back across the house to the neighbours, into which it enters through a hole in the separating wall. It actually runs across both dimensions of the loft in a diagonal. It is a horrible looking old cable.


Thanks. I guess this is not actually an issue for a domestic electrician as the mystery cable will be property of the distribution board, but I'm at a bit of a loss for where else to start. Well, other than a solicitor but I'm trying not to set fire to money.

(Actually given how daft it all is there is a slim possibility that the mystery brown cable comes out of the neighbouring property on the other side...)

In reply to wintertree:

In all seriousness, could your neighbour be running hydroponics from this feed?

Speak to the electricty board, they will tell you if its legit, and what you can do about it

In reply to wintertree:

Were the houses originally one house? That might explain the setup

In reply to balmybaldwin:


It wouldn't have surprised me with the last lot of tenants, but this cable is ancient and was partly buried under crap and dust that appears to be decades old.


Indeed thanks - that's item No 1 for tomorrow morning - I'm just drawing a total blank in finding any descriptions of comparable cases and who is likely to have to foot the bill etc.


No - next door was built 1900 and mine was built 1906, but I gather this was a non uncommon practice back whenever they brought mains electricity into these old brick terraces.

In reply to wintertree:

Any similar houses in the street? Might be worth talking to neigbours to see if they have a similar setup

In reply to wintertree:

How's your relationship with your neighbour? Sounds like you need a joint plan/united front to present to United Utilities or whoever is responsible for supplies to the meters.

From experience they can be quite good at condemning supplies and just cutting you off till they get round to doing something about it (over 24hrs in our case)

Might be worth having a chat to the Fire Brigade as well? There is a good chance that they would send someone out for a look.

In reply to butteredfrog:


Great. However they are tenants who are moving out and relations with their large scale commercial landlord are somewhere between non existent and troublesome.


I had rather feared that might be the case.



Excellent suggestion, thank you.

In reply to wintertree:

I had a similar (if reversed) situation working on a refurb project. I got the Distribution Company in to put in an isolator so that I could work on the property (1960’s detached house) and they found that the house was being supplied from next door.
Without any prompting from me, they dug up the road (and the garden) so as to put in a ‘proper’ supply to the house.

In reply to Mark Edwards:

Is the cable "live" - old house often have old cables left there from previous installations especially if they were rewire when the price of copper was low.

In reply to wintertree:
We have our neighbour's main feed (and fuse) in our house. Western power said nothing beyond it being unusual when they were out because of a problem with our power supply.

In reply to wintertree:

I wouldn't ring the 'leccy board up just yet, you could open up a whole load of problems for yourself. (The cable has to go somewhere) most probably on the outside of your house to feed next door. If it's not bothering you unduly, I'd leave it.

I'll PM you about it later if you like. I work for the local Electricity board.

In reply to Mark Edwards:

Interesting, thanks.

In reply to Mark Edwards:


I don't have the means to safely find out, but this is not like any old mains cable I've seen - it's a damned site thicker and a round cross-section, thicker than a thick thumb...

In reply to arch:
Thanks for the comments. It does indeed have to go somewhere, but the daft thing is that the external part of the cable makes "landfall" on the next door house and just makes a full traverse of my house "there and back again" to get to theirs, almost exactly mirroring the path taken by the 12V feed from the battery to the fuel pump fuse in a v-reg HDi 306 as it happens....

I'm afraid the cable is bothering me, it looks well old and is not something I want to bury under rolls of modern thermal insulation... If you want to drop me a message that's very kind, apologies in advance that I will likely be unable to reply before 1800.

In reply to wintertree:

Message sent........I think.

Basically, if your not sure about having another households service cable running through your loft, ask the Electricity board to move it for you. There shouldn't be a charge for it and it shouldn't be a problem for them to do it either.

Arch.

In reply to arch:

Hi Arch,

Yes, thanks for the informative PM.

Everyone - thanks for the comments. I spoke to the local distribution board have said they will contact me soon to arrange a site visit, and that it will likely be charmless work to fix it.

I don't event the work involved to next door as a new cable would make "landfall" on the wrong side of the house for their distribution board. Fingers crossed for a hassle free fix.

In reply to wintertree:

Potentially a loop-in system. In my house, there are two mains incomers. The first one is mine, both connect to the house fuse enclosure, but only one is protected by it. the second incomer is actually next doors (and I live in a detached house).

This has two side effects - firstly it saves the electricity company a little bit of cable, and secondly it reduces the allowed size of my house fuse (because the cable is serving two residences).

Finally, it means two neighbouring houses are both on the same phase, which is somewhat unusual, as far as I know.

It had never occurred to me to do anything about it, but then it's not in my way in any shape or form - a cable through the loft is a different matter!

In reply to Nutkey:


That's quite unusual in a detached house. That's unless your electricity is fed from overhead rather than underground. But it's very common in semis and terrace houses. Bring one feed into the party wall of a semi. Fit a meter board, main fuse and a meter on one side of the wall. Drill through the wall and fit the same on the other side. Loop out of the bottom of the first main fuse to the second fuse and your away.