Electrician Muxx on the Job

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Many moons ago, before Multiple Sclerosis made me give up work, I changed career and worked with my older brother in construction. On an evening I put myself through college to train as an electrician and performed many jobs rewiring houses and such. Recently my sister in law and her boyfriend bought an old house in need of renovating.

Knowing my prior work experience I was asked yesterday to take a look at the property and the many electrical jobs, large and small, that need to be done. I went along this afternoon to see the job.

In the past week or so a plumber has refitted radiators and replaced all of the pipework in the house underneath the floorboards - they were previously sat on show above the skirting boards. Pipework leading from upstairs down had to be sunk into the brick walls so the house has plaster dust covering everything. Where he needed access below, the floorboards have been taken up.

There appear to be TV aerial wires in every room, poked through the ceilings and dangling down. One job is to connect the aerial with new cabling, running it inside walls and to freshly installed aerial sockets. Several electricity sockets do not work and need removing. Others, along with new cables, need to be installed.

The shower unit was installed way too high on the wall and needs replacing anyway. That means more cabling. All three bedrooms have pulley light switches that need to be removed and some light fittings changed.

At the back of the property, behind a few greenhouses, sits a workshop. There used to be an armoured cable supplying power but this has been cut at some point, so a new one needs to be installed.

All of the kitchen units had to be stripped out due to their age, revealing many electrical horrors with some cables tied together rather than safely connected. The entire kitchen circuit needs to be replaced.

Worryingly, water pipes with potentially leaking connections, run across the top of the fuse box. The plumber has been asked to reroute these underneath the box.

My ill health makes it hard for me to do physical labour and naturally my sister in law and her boyfriend know this and are willing to do it all under my instruction. The laying of cables will be done by them and I will just do the final connections. The work will then be inspected and passed by a registered electrician with the relevant legal paperwork.

It feels good to be somewhat useful again, having not worked for over ten years, and the little extra pocket money always helps.

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