On 14 Apr 2021 22:40:08 GMT, Marland
wrote:

Charles Ellson wrote:
On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 10:08:02 +0100, MB wrote:

On 11/04/2021 11:44, Roland Perry wrote:
Rather than laying a whole new cable, can't the existing cable supplying
every house be used?

That's even deeper, and is typically about as thick as your arm and a
real pig to make connections to.

Surely a cable to a house is not that thick? The house supply is about
half an inch diameter.

A very small house ?
You're probably looking at at least 16mm^2 SWA which is about 20.4mm
diameter for 2 core; 25mm^2 is about 24.1mm OD. The 100A supply to my
house is about an inch over the armour.


There must be quite a lot of properties who now still use an incomer around
a 100 years old,
most of those may need uprating,. I was once called to a pub whose
landlord was concerned about
a strange smell in his Cellar, upon inspection I found that a pitch like
substance was dripping from the incomer where it emerged from the cellar
wall. Over the years refrigeration and cooking equipment add just been
added and the cable was getting hot enough that the pitch like substance
which was just under the steel armour outer sheath was getting liquid
enough to flow out.

If mine is still the original (and some of the remaining cast iron
bits on the fuseboard suggest it is) then it is 96 years old. The
original wire main fuses IIRC were 50 or 60A but later changed to an
80A cartridge fuse (when storage heaters were installed about 50y ago)
then to the current 100A.