In the UK (and NZ) a sparky is an electrician. Oddly, there's no equivalent nickname for plumbers, carpenters, etc. But then, they don't have the sense of humor a sparky has. If a plumber installs pipes the wrong way, they leak. If a builder frames a wall the wrong way, it collapses. But a sparky can run electricity pretty much any damn way he wants and get it to work. The trick is that when you're trying to troubleshoot an issue, you basically have to reverse-engineer everything he did, with the added bonus that you can't see any of the cabling. I think they know that and so go out of their way to run wiring in the most convoluted fashion, just to amuse themselves knowing that for the next 50 years people will be trying to figure out what they did.
Our house was last renovated in the 50s, I'm guessing, based on the use of fluorescent strip lights in all the bedrooms. They looked horrific, even more so because the batten covers were broken or missing. When they started flickering, I bought floor lamps but they weren't hooked up to the switch so you'd have to turn on the fluorescent light to find the floor lamp!
About two months ago, someone showed me an LED batten designed to replace the strip lights. Whilst not ideal, the cost was reasonable (about $40 US) and they looked a lot better, so I bought one and put it in one of the rooms. It was fairly easy to install but there were two issues: 1) It wasn't exactly the same size, and someone had painted around the strip light, so this now exposed a chunk of unpainted ceiling; and 2) it was three times as bright!! Way too bright for a bedroom.
I found another batten that was half as bright and installed it in the second bedroom. Again, installation was easy and it revealed a chunk of unpainted ceiling, but it still looked much better than the old light and it didn't flicker or hum. It was still a bit bright but it was OK, so I ended up replacing the first light with the same model.
My plan was to return the ultra-bright light but then for some reason I decided to put it in my office, which had a double strip light, even though I didn't have any problems with that light. I turned off the switch and pulled the old light down, just as I had done in the bedrooms. I hadn't really paid attention to the wiring because I'd already done this twice before. I connected the new light and flipped the switch just to make sure everything was working and...nothing.
I thought maybe there was a loose connection so I turned off the switch, got on my step ladder, started checking the little screws clamping the wires and got a nice, little shock. 240 volts right through my hands. Thankfully I wasn't grounded and I was able to release what I was touching, so the only damage done was to my pride. Nevertheless, I decided to stop working on it for the night and deal with it the next day.
That evening I noticed the light in the stairway was out, and later one of the kids mentioned the light in the bathroom was out as well. Putting two and two together I realised I'd screwed something up. My assumptions about how the light was wired were completely wrong, and it would take me two days to figure it out, in part because of two things:
1) The wire I thought went to the switch actually went to the upstairs bathroom. When I first checked it, the circuit was open (ie no current flow) but later on I checked it again and it was closed (ie short-circuited). I could not figure out how this was possible, but later I realised it was because the bathroom switch was originally off but a child had flipped it on (and left it on).
2) if you threw the bathroom switch the bathroom light wouldn't come on, but the stairway light did! I'm still not sure how that is possible, but I did realise the cause: After my first failure, I had disconnected some of the wires but left two wires connected. As far as I'm concerned, that was strictly voodoo.
On top of that, the wiring was so old the insulation kept coming off in my hands and I kept having to shorten the leads to minimize exposed wires. There wasn't a lot of room to spare and I was very concerned that if I needed an electrician to install more romex, he was going to insist everything be brought up to modern code.
The obvious solution was to hook the hot and cold wires together, but with one circuit closed I was sure I was going to short-circuit the entire house. However, I didn't have any other ideas so I hooked them up, grabbed the fire extinguisher from the kitchen and turned on the electricity. To my amazement, everything worked again!
Now you're probably imagining me working in my nice, clean office standing on a stepstool, but nothing could be further from the truth. Two weeks ago I'd dragged in three boxes of food from the Civil Defense (ie. earthquake) supplies, and I'd replaced all the expiring food but hadn't gotten around to finishing the inventory, so they were spread across the office. And the stepstool was just one step too short, so I'd brought in the only other thing I had: a full-sized aluminum ladder, which took up the entire room. It was so tight, if I dropped something on the wrong side of the ladder I practically had to take the ladder out of the room to get to the other side. (And yes, aluminum ladders are a poor choice when working with electricity, but I made sure I was wearing rubber-soled shoes.)
The old strip light had space for the wire connectors but the new light didn't, so I needed to shove them into the ceiling, except the hole wasn't big enough. I could have gone to the garage for an appropriate tool but instead I grabbed a kitchen knife and started stabbing the ceiling. Eventually the hole was big enough and, 24 hours later, we haven't had a ceiling fire so I'm counting this as a win.
The last thing was to snap the light to two clips mounted on the ceiling. I got one in but could not get the other, and eventually I gave up. So far one clip seems to be holding it. The other thing is the office ceiling wasn't painted, but appears to have had some sort of wallpaper instead. The paper had chipped and cracked and each time I brushed the light against the ceiling, large chunks flaked off. Some of them were big enough to drop in the bin, but most broke apart and needed to be hoovered. Oh, and the ceiling was fibrous, which makes me wonder if it had asbestos.
But the important point is that it's finished and I know better than to touch the electrics again...at least until this weekend, when I replace the heated towel rack in the kids bathroom.
