In my parents bungalow a squirrel has chewed most of the cables in the loft down to the metal cores. To be honest it was lucky the electricity was off when i went up there to look at the roof battens. How do i fix this?? The bungalow was fully and professionally rewired in the early 1990s and has recently been fully redecorated... All the circuits go up to the loft and drop down:- Storage heaters 5X, Ring Main, Lights and Cooker, and most are damaged. All the cables go down behind the plaster with (i suspect) channel trunking. Will i need to have it fully rewired? will the plaster have to be chased out? Thank you for any help you can give me.
Rewire I reckon, not repairable in my opinion. No need to chase, as old cables should be in conduit hopefully.
If it was rewired properly they would have put in conduit for all the socket and switch drops. If it is getting rewired like for like the cables should be able to be pulled down the conduit with minimal damage.
If you can get to undamaged parts of the cables there's nothing wrong with joining in new sections of cable providing it's done properly. As for "If it was rewired properly they would have put in conduit", what twaddle!
Anyone who does not use conduit is not taking enough pride in the job. It is the I was taught many years ago when I served my time and to me it is the only way to do the job. I would never dream of not using it.
Huh!, I'm with Sen, or are some confusing conduit with capping?. To chase out enough for conduit is just not viable against other quotes that will invariably use capping if not nothing at all, no regs against it particularly, just a plasterers trowel!.
Replace the damaged runs of cable with fresh using suitable joint boxes. No need to rewire it all. If channel trunking has been used there will be breakout of the plaster, and there's no need to cause unnecessary redecoration. And mesh up all the rodents' access areas - presumably the soffit area. Use chicken wire. A 'gold plated' install may well use conduit bushed into the accessory back boxes, but if I was doing that it would pretty much double my price on an install.
i found the same in a shop in Manchester turns out the fire alarm went into fault every time they was on the cable creating a short