wobs
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- Hull - there's a nip in the air.
A warning from our conservation area group:
Here is an interesting warning received today about a problem that could arise for others now we are using a lot more electricity at home:
Firstly let me make it clear I mean 'owners of old houses' and not 'old owners of houses'!
A little story.
Bear with me it is relevant.
The day before yesterday there was in our house the slight smell of 'burning rubber'.
I mentioned it to the wife and she quietly wondered if I was about to have a stroke as this is one of the tell tale signs.
The next morning I smelt it again and we wondered if it was the tumble drier or washing machine belt wearing out. The smell went away.
After a day in the garden I had a shower and upon going into the hall there was a strong smell of burning rubber or Bakelite. We were both a bit concerned now and I went on a hunt using my nose to track the source.
I ended up next to the electrical fuse board and after touching various parts of the cables and fuses discovered that one block and wires was too hot to touch.
I rang a friendly electrician we knew and described the situation. He asked me to take a picture, using my phone, of the relevant part. He advised me to ring our electricity supplier [not the one that sells you electricity, the one that provides the infrastructure] which for our region is 'Northern Powergrid'.
I rang them, described the issue and within an hour they had arrived to rectify the problem and then sorted it out.
The problem turned out to be a faulty fuse.
The point for you to note is that the fuse in question comes before your electrical consumer unit - or fuse box - and so does not trip out, as would usually happen. It is a black bakelite rectangular block that is the first thing the wires coming into the house attach to. It in fact contains a very big fuse (similar to the small one in an ordinary plug) that was fitted when electricity was installed in your house after you stopped having gas lighting!!!!! possibly 80+ years ago. They act as an emergency backup fuse should everything else fail.
They get old and then make poor contact and then heat up under load [like using an electric shower] and eventually will blow or melt. It is an unusual problem as most houses now have modern editions [white] of this fuse but some old houses have never had them replaced.
The worst case scenario would probably be a bad smell and a power cut.
We are now on a 'low priority' schedule for cable maintenance.