Things not to discover at 10pm

[reynardo]

1) One of your rental house's fuses has blown.

2) Being an older style house and a rental, it's still using fusewire.

3) None of the supermarkets, servos or other open stores at 10pm stock fusewire. The suggestion to use a paper clip was ignored.

4) The next day, the local HUGE hardware store has, in its cavernous shelves, one tiny box only of fusewire.

5) Should the 20 amp fuse blow, we're screwed, because the hardware shop only had 8 and 15 amp wire.

So I've spoken to the agents and have the go-ahead to buy the plug-in replacement circuit breakers. I'm surprised no-one's done it before, but by the look of some of the other fuses in the box, I'm also thinking that the fuses have blown late at night before and been jerry-rigged. At least one fuse-holder has a triple piece of fence wire in it, and I dread to think what I'll find when I pull the rest.

Comments

[freyaw.livejournal.com]

*blink* *wince*

[http://users.livejournal.com/raven_/]

Ugh. Wonder if we have any fuse wire. Hrm....

[shadow-5tails.livejournal.com]

Sounds like the paperclip would be inkeeping with previous repairs. *eyeroll*

Glad you got the go-ahead to bring the place into the modern age...

[moxie_man]

I was going to ask the same thing. If you're a renter, why should you be paying for this safety repair? Shouldn't this be the problem of the agent/landlord to bring this place up-to-code?

I know we're not in the same country, but around these parts, if a renter has to do this, by law, they can turn in the receipts in lieu of rent (full or partial depending on the amount spent--dollar for dollar).

[saluqi.livejournal.com]

IAN reynardo, but I live in Canberra.

There are two major shortages here - affordable rental accommodation and affordable tradespeople. That translates to it usually being more efficient to take care of stuff yourself if you can. At least we're not in Sydney where rental vacancies have fallen to .9 per cent.

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

FWIW, the agent here has been pretty good about getting things fixed when they need fixing (like, electrician around the next day for non-emergency stuff). Just that we hadn't looked at the fuses until now...

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'll be getting the money back from the agents for the new circuit breakers. Replacing fuses (as in replacing the wire piece) comes under the same sort of heading as replacing light bulbs and about the same level of difficulty. The wire cost me $1.28. Putting in the circuit breakers is actually easier - just take out the old fuse holder and slide in the new breaker.

It's more the amazement that no-one had done this simple step before.

[darclaird.livejournal.com]

The reason it may not have been done (as I discovered in the last house I was on the lease in) is that depending on the age of the house you may not be able to buy the replacement plug in RCDs, at some point the size of fuses changed (or a standard was imposed) which would require a complete replacement of the fuse board (at which point, get RCDs anyway) which, assuming the rest of the wiring is ok, is fairly straightforward, if expensive

Best o' Luck

J

[wookie-cd.livejournal.com]

If you run into any trouble with the 20amp ones before they are replaced, you can try 15+8 in the same holder. Any house wiring with a 20 amp fuse on it should be trustworthy well past 23 amps.