Stealing Electricity

salmocab

A friend of mine rang me on friday saying he had a problem with power in a house he rents out, he said that there was a problem with turning power off to the oven that needed fixing but as it was some handyman doing it I presumed he was just making an arse of turning off the mcb. I was going away for the weekend so I got another spark I work with to pop up and he rang me to say that when he turned off the main fuse in the fuse board only the lights went off, basically after investigating it he found that the old tenants had taken off a rad smashed thru a wall broke the hockey stick pipe below the meter box and tapped the mains to a cooker switch and then onto the fuse board.
They must have been heating the house with electrical heaters for quite a while as some of the sockets had the scorch marks that come with constant use and high wattage and these needed replacing also it looked like the oil boiler hadn't been used in years.
The ESB came out friday afternoon and replaced the cable which obviously was not safe and the engineer said they have come across this a bit before, Ive never seen it before but sure you hear tales about it, anyone ever come across this sort of set up before.

Sir Arthur Daley

They knew what they were doing tapping into the concentric esb cable.

salmocab

Yeah mate says they knew what they were at

Luckysasha

It's getting more and more common. I have even heard of people breaking in to mini pillars on the street and tapping off them. I'm sure it's like everything else there are people offering this service on the black market. It will only stop when someone is killed

Cerco

Did the landlord not notice the damaged wall before now?
I would think he would have some explaining to do to the supplier.

Cerco

Luckysasha wrote: »

It's getting more and more common. I have even heard of people breaking in to mini pillars on the street and tapping off them. I'm sure it's like everything else there are people offering this service on the black market. It will only stop when someone is killed

I have heard of this happening with gas supply boxes so I suppose it is not unexpected. This can only end badly.

sparcocars

Yeah this is happening all the time. A lot of drugs grow houses have this done.

salmocab

Cerco wrote: »

Did the landlord not notice the damaged wall before now?
I would think he would have some explaining to do to the supplier.

Nah sure the internal damage was behind a radiator, I was talking to the lad I got to go out to it and he said that they knocked a hole in the wall below the meter box about 6 inch by 6 inch and managed to nibble away the cable in such a way that they got connector blocks on to the live and neutral then connected an nymj on and brought this in thru the house behind the rad and somehow up to the distribution board. They patched the external hole and painted over it so without having a good look you wouldn't think any thing of it.
The guy from the ESB said that the owner wouldn't be in any trouble as it was him who contacted the ESB and they had seen it before, he said he will give them any details of the old tenants that he has including the forwarding address (if its real). The engineer was impressed with how they managed to do it thru the hole as it was so small.