Friday, November 07, 2008

When even the good news isn't actually good...

We started having some problems with the electrics in our bathroom recently.  A while ago the fan stopped working and we never quite got round to getting it fixed.  And then the bathroom light started flickering randomly.  It's irritating when the light goes out when you're on the loo...

When the fan switch started sparking and making crackling noises and the light was flickering even when it was turned off at the switch, we thought we'd better do something.  We turned the light circuit off at the fuse box and lived in darkness for a week.  The electrician came out on Monday and said the wire from the light switch and the wire to the light fitting were different colours (apparently bad), the light was live all the time (also bad apparently) and the fuse for the wiring circuit should have an earth as well as a live wire coming out of it(even I know this isn't good).

They came back yesterday and did some more investigations.  Matt texted me to say there was good news and there was bad news.  At this point I was hopeful.  Maybe, I thought, this meant that not much needed doing but they couldn't do it for a couple of weeks.  No...  The bad news is that the whole house needs rewiring.  The good news is that the house hasn't burnt down.  At some point the fan set itself on fire and then smothered itself.

3 comments:

Merlin said...

eeeek

RedHillian said...

Ouch. I forget, are you in your own place or still renting (everyone keeps moving, and I can't remember if we're the only people trapped in landlord-land).

Sarah said...

We now own it. So it's our responsibility. However, we still like being out of landlord-land :)