The leccy* Men Come

Today Friday was Electricity day and I decided as I wanted to work from Home in the morning that I would need to arrange an alternative power supply;

I thought of Solar power - wrong country,
wind power - no nearby wind farm

So I settled instead for a power Socket n my neighbours garage and with the help of two reels of cable was able to set up an externally powered office running my broadband modem and laptop off my new temporary electricity.(thanks Pete)

*Scottish slang for Electricity employee

I think I have already explained that while I pay Scottish Power for both my gas and electricity the local power network is provided and maintained by Scottish and Southern energy.
So before 9 my door bell rang and Ken & Simon (thanks guys) arrived to make the two joins to allow the lowering of the cable.
Unfortunately I was participating in a teleconference so I was not able to take many pictures at the start, I was however able to get some pictures of the re-connection process






I realised that the join was going to be made by
the Company I used to work for in Swindon
Below you will see the joint being prepared using Tyco (used to be Raychem) tubing

 Step one - prepare to cut the live wire originally I imagined they must pull some amazing fuse somewhere instead idiscovered  they wear specialist gloves and work very very carefully.  they first strip the cable and prepare the two wires, these are then cut and insulated seperately,here you see the cable being prepared by Ken

 Now comes the fun part using a blow torch to heat the previously expanded and irradiated tube allows the tube to shrink back to its unexpanded shape Tyco 's technology allows the polymer to "melt" but retains its original shape and if skillfully done - as here it will not burn






Here you see one end of the cable being prepared to be spliced into the connector
The next step is using the special connectors supplied with the Tyco connection kit if you look here you will see that each wire has its own connector

 Finally the splice is placed inside a plastic enclosure and this is filled with a special resin which is activated by the air and begins to cure
A lid is placed on the full cable splice and then the lid is sealed with some more resin
below you can see each step
The first picture shows the enclosure in place before the resin is added, the next photo shows the box being filled up

I wonder if Ken & Simon can tell whose splice box is whose - the question is does "youthful" enthusiasm beat "experience" :-) 

Anyway a great job done by Southern Electric so round of applause to Ken & Simon
the job was done quickly and profesionally.
Nice to have met you.



Only 1 utility company left and that is Thames Water they will come Monday after noon to connect the new water pipe to the water meter.