First episode of Redwood Renovation is now live!

[RedwoodRenovation]

I've put the first episode of Redwood Renovation up, so you can see the fire damaged roof ( or lack of it) and the what happens when you remove a chimney stack and knock 4 rooms into 1 (only on a temporary basis!). I'll be putting the first floor back....

Let me know what you think.

http://www.RedwoodRenovation.com

Regards

Graham

 

[JoceAndChris]

So you were living in it, and it was work in progress, and then it caught fire, and became even more work in progress? Many a person would have given up! Well done for not - it's a very fine looking house. What a project you have though!

I loved the story about the hidden cigarette packet too.

 

[RedwoodRenovation]

Hi,

Yes it was an ongoing project, I hadn't done that much inside, in comparison to where I am now! I've done a lot of work outside though, walls removed or demolished as they were dangerous! Also, there are a lot of trees and I've done some brutal woodland management, as it had no real care for about 30 years..... When I've done the majority of the work in the house, I can get back outside and do some tree and hedgerow planting!!

After removing the chimney, it became apparent that I'd have to replace all the floor joists in the two bedrooms, a rather expensive and time consuming experience :-(

The construction company, who is tasked with the fire related work have actually put a steel beam in today. The first bit of construction work that didn't involve ripping something out! The fire was on 4th July 2009, it's taken til now, Seven and a half months later, to start putting it back together!!

Spent this long cold winter in a static caravan, not something that I'd recommend...

 

[Flyfisher]

Presumably all the fire damage repairs are being paid for by the next door house from their insurance policy (assuming they had insurance)?
Quite an impressive project though. Nice to record it all with a website.


Regarding the news item about NEDL shrouding the electricity cables to the house - I realise it's a bit late now, but are you sure this was absolutely necessary? When our scaffolding was first being erected, one of the scaffolders spotted the overhead cable to the house and refused to erect any scaffolding in the vicinity until it was shrouded.

This seemed odd to me since it was an armoured cable, but there was little I could say and, fair enough, safety first. I called EDF (our network supplier) and they gave me the same story that you mentioned regarding the option to pay £250 to have the work done quickly, otherwise it might take up to 6 weeks.

The next day, a chap from EDF turned up to have a look. He said he dropped by because his team had been scheduled to do the shrouding work but he couldn't really understand why because no domestic houses should have bare wires anywhere near them. A brief inspection confirmed they were not bare wires (I could see that) and were standard, armoured cables, perfectly safe and not in any need of shrouding.

I told the scaffolding company and they completed the scaffolding with no problems, even supporting the cables on brackets as they came to the house.

A cynic might concluded that 'shrouding' is a bit of a racket, especially at £250 a time to expedite something that isn't necessary anyway.

 

[MdB]

He said he dropped by because his team had been scheduled to do the shrouding work but he couldn't really understand why because no domestic houses should have bare wires anywhere near them.

Ho hum... We have unshielded cables maybe 3m away from the house. When we have the back of the house done, we will definitely have them shrouded (and have spoken to Western Power about it already)

 

[RedwoodRenovation]

Well, you'd think that I could claim from next door, (who has moved back into his place two days before Christmas!) but, I can't.

The fire was caused by faulty fuse box, but not the fault of my neighbour! Unfair to me, but I can't do anything about it....

 

[Flyfisher]

Ho hum... We have unshielded cables maybe 3m away from the house. When we have the back of the house done, we will definitely have them shrouded (and have spoken to Western Power about it already)

The wires between our old telegraph poles were bare, but from the pole to the house the cable was insulated and armoured. The closest pole was about 6-7m from the house. I agree that 3m is a bit close for comfort, especially if scaffolding reduces the gap and people are carrying long bits of metal pole!

If you schedule the shrouding well in advance then you shouldn't have to pay anything. At least that's what EDF told me - it's only if you need it done quickly that they charge £250 (where 'quickly' means within 10 days). Western Power may have differrent tariffs, of course.

 

[Flyfisher]

Well, you'd think that I could claim from next door, (who has moved back into his place two days before Christmas!) but, I can't.

The fire was caused by faulty fuse box, but not the fault of my neighbour! Unfair to me, but I can't do anything about it....

Wow - that's astonishing. Fair enough that the cause of the fire wasn't your neighbours fault as such, but it clearly started on their property and spread to yours. I would have thought that their fire insurance would pay for the damage done to your property. Obviously not.

 

[RedwoodRenovation]

I initially thought that I would be claiming from next door's insurance, but it's not like a car crash, where there would be one driver who caused it (in the majority of cases). It's a non-fault incident. If he poured 20 litres of petrol through the letter box, that would be different!

The fire brigade told me that the new loft insulation that I had installed in January last year saved the rest of the house! It kept the heat away from the ceiling joists. Mind you, they said another 20 minutes and the rest of the house would have burned down anyway, so it was a very close run thing!

I asked the fire chief if the smoke alarms were going off and he said no, as the fire was in the loft and so was the smoke! The first I would have known about it was when the ceilings collapsed!! Not a nice thought. Both us and next door were out at the time and it was during the day, so very lucky all round.

 

[MdB]

The wires between our old telegraph poles were bare, but from the pole to the house the cable was insulated and armoured. The closest pole was about 6-7m from the house. I agree that 3m is a bit close for comfort, especially if scaffolding reduces the gap and people are carrying long bits of metal pole!

If you schedule the shrouding well in advance then you shouldn't have to pay anything. At least that's what EDF told me - it's only if you need it done quickly that they charge £250 (where 'quickly' means within 10 days). Western Power may have differrent tariffs, of course.

I've just checked, the wires are 2m horizontally and maybe 1.5m vertically from the corner of the house. Way to close for scaffold poles and yes it is free to shroud if you give them enough warning.

I asked the fire chief if the smoke alarms were going off and he said no, as the fire was in the loft and so was the smoke! The first I would have known about it was when the ceilings collapsed!! Not a nice thought. Both us and next door were out at the time and it was during the day, so very lucky all round.

I've been thinking about putting a smoke alarm in the loft but as it is fairly well ventilated, I think smoke from our neighbours (and in time, hopefully our) chimneys will cause false alarms. I would be interested in other peoples thoughts about this.

 

[Flyfisher]

I've just checked, the wires are 2m horizontally and maybe 1.5m vertically from the corner of the house. Way to close for scaffold poles

Agreed.

I've been thinking about putting a smoke alarm in the loft but as it is fairly well ventilated, I think smoke from our neighbours (and in time, hopefully our) chimneys will cause false alarms. I would be interested in other peoples thoughts about this.

Well, Redwood's rather worrying story has made me think about a smoke alarm in the attic. It would need to be an interlinked one to ensure all the others go off because it may not be heard in a well-insulated attic. A mains-operated one would seem sensible as well, to avoid the need to clamber around to change the battery. I would guess that external chimney smoke would not set off an attic alarm because I can't imagine too much smoke getting into the attic, even if well ventilated, or because of that. But it is just a guess. At least it wouldn't cost too much to try one though.

 

[Penners]

no domestic houses should have bare wires anywhere near them.

FF - when we bought this house about 6 months ago, it had shrouds over the cables entering the house. I assumed this was because it had recently been re-roofed, and because the cables were uninsulated. A month or two after we moved in, a couple of guys from EDF came and removed the (unsightly) shrouds.

But after reading the above posts on this subject, I wonder whether the cables are bare conductors or not. I assumed that they are because their outer surface consists of helical strands of wire. But is this perhaps just armouring?

 

[Flyfisher]

Hmm. Interesting, especially as you're also in the EDF area. How are the wires attached to the house? We have an old ceramic insulator on one corner of the house, although the insulated cable wasn't attached to it, and I wonder it this was originally used for bare wires and that we had been 'upgraded' to an armoured cable at some time?

If your wires really are bare then they must surely be joined to an insulated cable before they enter the house and connect to the meter. Presumably that would be done at the house bracket.

Alternatively, perhaps your wires are insulated but not armoured? It does seem odd that they really could be bare wires - what about the risks of using a ladder? It would seem sensible to shroud such 'unprotected' cables when scaffolding works are in progress.

It just goes to show that things are seldom as simple as they may seem.

 

[MdB]

Below are the wires outside our house (sorry not a great pic). The main horizontal wires going to the pole in sets of three are unshielded with the top wire being neutral/ground and the low two being different phases. You don't want to touch these :shock:. From the pole going to each of the neighbouring properties is insulated cable with a centre live conductor surrounded by a shield that is connected to neutral / earth. There is no problem in touching this cable.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

I still have three cables coming into my house from the pole. I presume Earth and two phases?

Is this a bit old fashioned? Should I ask them to renew/change them? They replaced the meter recent with a whizzy new digital one, but I forgot to ask the EDF chappy about the cables (I was more concerned he might have spotted I snipped the tag on the 100A fuse so I could replace the consumer unit recently - he didn't seem to care!)

 

[Flyfisher]

Our poles were similar to MdB's photo, except it only served our property; one neutral conductor and two phase conductors - one for each of our meters (which meant half the house was on one phase and half on another and not really to be recommended, but that's another story). And the cable from the pole to the house was the insulated, armoured cable, as per MdB's photo, and quite safe to touch.

FW: Unless you have two meters, I'm not sure you'd have two phases to the house, so I'm guessing that the three wires would be phase, neutral and earth. My understanding is that the neutral conductor is the earth from the local feed point (sub-station) and the 'earth' conductor is an earth local to your house. But it is a guess. It might be worth calling your network company; my experience is that they were quite happy to make quite major changes to update things and, in my case, at no cost.

I presume all these examples meet the various regulations, but I wouldn't be comfortable with bare wires coming right up to the house. I used to be nervous enough with the wires between our poles because they passed over our garage and I was forever moving aluminium ladders to and fro. Clearing autumn leaves from gutters is hazardous enough without worrying about being electrocuted.

 

[Jill]

We've just had our house completely rewired and the electrician suggested we had a detector put in the loft so we have just had a mains one fitted, at this point can't remember if it is a heat detector or a smoke detector.

Graham I was going to comment on how clean the house looked saying it had been fire damaged, but as it was confined to the loft space it will explain why. We replaced half of our roof and the first floor joists so I am used to seeing a house with no first floors. One of the builders who we asked for a quote said I would cry when the roof was taken off. (He didn't get the job) The day it came off I walked up the stairs and just laughed, it felt so weird to walk up the stairs to have nothing above. Good luck with it all.

 

[MdB]

my experience is that they were quite happy to make quite major changes to update things and, in my case, at no cost.

That was my experience too. We had a new meter but everything else was old including their fuse and incoming cable connections. Basically it was a complete mess. That combined with a broken insulator outside got the boss man to come around and have a look. He agreed it needed replacing and agreed to move the cable entry point at the same time as long as I drilled the hole. Didn't get charged a penny.

We had the meter changed as well as we were changing to Economy 10 electric but this had to be done by a different person as it is considered to belong to the electricity supply company rather the electricity distribution company...

 

[Jill]

We had to pay £369.71 to have one of our electricity supplies disconnected, but the temporary relocation of the cabling to the other supply whilst the scaffolding was erected and the building work was done cost nothing.

 

[Feltwell]

You can hit lucky. I arranged to get the meter moved in my last house, for which the Electricity Board wanted £275. I got everything prepared, even put up a backing board for the meter to be fixed onto - the man turned up, did the job in 15 minutes and said to me "Seeing as how you've made it nice and easy for me I'll tell the office you cancelled the call".