Very professional electrician. Not many would continue a job like this and simply walk off. Thanks for saving this households lives.

Giving the rust, it's entirely possible that that hole drilled for the telephone/tv cable isn't sealed properly on the outside and that's how water has been able to enter.

Look at the underneath og the BT socket. That's where the waters getting jn, where BT has drilled the cable through the wall, not drilling downwards, and probably not sealing the hole

The green goo is caused by the plasticiser reacting with the copper. The real danger is the gerrn goo can effectively cause a electrical fire. The area should be recommended to be rewired asap. Personally i would have told her that the skirting board needed to come off its only a couple of foot long.

You're doing a good job on the damp conditions of the sockets.

You get yourself into some situations delroy. It’s nice see you been helpful and respectful too your customers hopefully damp has stopped as that my concern how sockets have gotten so much corrosion is main problem. Hopefully this lady gets everything sorted lucky there was no serious damage with burning.

Respect due Del- it’s not just about the glamorous jobs

I'm surprised this hasn't been an issue sooner, but I'm glad you continued with the job and helped the client, nothing worse than finding a rpoblem is bigger than you thought and the person you called leaving off without aiding you.

“There’s no damp in that corner” Del finds basically a swamp! 😂 And what’s that annoying bit of cable coming out of the wall alongside the BT box?? Aerial co-ax? Anyway, as soon as you pulled the first cover it was obvious this was going to be a bigger job! Another nice video - keep up the good work Del! 👍

That skirting under sockets not matching other wall was a massive red flag to me , never had damp in that wall😂

We had a sparkie round to add a point in the garden. He actually wired it into the street light. Happy days.

KZfaq randomly suggested this vid to me, and I'm glad it did. Considerations of outside/rising damp aside, I *think* a culprit for those rusted sockets might be *condensation,* and it sounds to me like *all* of the mains wiring in that room might need replacement. She certainly needs a full installation safety test ASAP, especially as what she said at 17:06 („None of the sockets that side work“) suggests to me a possible break in the downstairs ring. 🔌⚡🔥😳 The room has plants in it which might not help (Look at any greenhouse!) and those sockets are low down on an outside wall, presumably solid/non-cavity. On colder nights the wall will get cold, causing condensation to form as warm air inside the room comes into contact with the cold wall. This builds up on the face of the wall and then runs down, in this case right into the top of the sockets and onto the exterior top of the back-box. Cue a few warm/cold cycles and decay of the back boxes starts fairly quickly, especially if they're cheaper (thinner) steel with poor galvanisation. 💧 In this case the decay has clearly affected the sockets and cables as well as the boxes, and I wouldn't regard *any* of them at all salvageable - The CPC fault you found shows there are definitely other faults elsewhere. ⚠ Personally; The replacement sockets might be best not sited on that wall - Or if they are; In plastic surface mounted boxes and with sufficient protection against condensation taken into consideration. 👍

My quick and good way to bung in new back boxes in this kind of situation is to use chemfix. Strong and durable. Sets in 20 mins. As soon as it's set, you can mix up some filler and plaster around the gaps, trowelled smooth ready to piant. Then in an hour you can move to the next job.

I’m amazed that the RCD didn’t trip!

Hi, I had a similar one at my father in law's house. A leak in the bathroom above caused water to run down into the light switch in the lounge. When I removed the switch there was no backbox, it was chiselled out of the brickwork, and the screws holding the switch were into two pieces of wood wedged into the side. It was done like that from when the house was built, 56 years ago. Never seen a switch like this, the connections were side by side a the bottom(i 1 gang) like in a connector block. Anyway, new plaster depth box and switch fitted. all OK. Cheers Mike

Impossible situation delroy you advised her well and she didn't want it rewiring as an emergency it's her choice they'll do it when they have the funds when she's doing the other Remedial work. As well well done 👏 ✔️ 👍

Some poor bugger would of lit up like a Christmas tree glad you sorted the problem and told the reality of the situation

Great video thanks mate :)

The joy of old houses, rising damp and rot.

It looked like the consumer unit was located in a cellar / basement, so would it not have been easier to go down there and see if cables were easily available down there? If so, I’d have made a new connection down there and run the new cable up the wall to allow new back boxes to be chopped in 500mm from floor level. Easier to use at that height and stops plug cable fouling on skirting board. I’d have then filled the old holes and the chase to new height boxes. If it’s rising damp, then placing sockets higher could help avoid the lower damp affected wall.

Watched a couple of videos, this guy instantly gives off an air of trust and experience. I sound like an advert hahah. Shame he's complete opposite way (I'm West London), I'd call him if I ever needed electrics checked

As a French electrician I'm always amazed why British electricians don't use conduits and air-tight plastic back-boxes like we do over here. It prevents so many problems and makes repairs soooooo much easier. It's even way quicker to install.

Would the breaker have to be downrated so it can be run as 2 radials especially as its lost earth ? Or will the 2 radials be ok with a path bk to cu via an earth ?

Do you think you could do a tool bag loadout video? What wire strippers do you use? Great video btw!

Take the skirting off, check or replace those cables, new boxes and replace the skirting?

The lady told Del that the other socket wasn't working properly also. Del couldn't have heard that fully, as that other socket should have been investigated. There should in practicality, always be spare cable behind the wall to aid pulling fresh wire for a replacement socket. However, too many sparkies and especially home handymen do not realise the advisability of spare cable.

An electrician who cleans after himself. Have not seen that before 😂 4:50

It would be necessary to raise the floorboards, make few JBs under the floor and extend the cables. Existing back boxes must be dismantled and the walls plastered. Is this an outside wall? If so some insulation for back boxes should be applied.

I didn't have one as bad as that but only noticed a problem when my daughters computer was shutting off. I removed three sockets close to it to check and they were all fine and then removed the one the computer was plugged into and found something had leached out of the wall and damaged the socket. Swapped the socket and not had a problem since. Wasn't quite as bad as this one thankfully.

I am very impressed by your attitude and level of service. I wish more electricians showed off their competence this way… rather than hiding their ineptness when tying their horses up outside!

Great video!, however, the lady probably has water leaking from the roof getting down to those sockets and causing the corrosion and green corrosion residues on the fittings,hopefully you can fix the wiring

Good work. How often do cables in the wall need to be replaced? I recently had Home Serve out to replace my electrical box under the stairs as it was an old one from the 80s or 90s. Nothing was mentioned about the cables in the walls. I think theyve been there since the early 90s.

Good vid, and what an awful mess!! Green is usually copper oxide, I ALWAYS put cable in conduit. Where is damp coming from? Rising damp? Leak or historic leak?

Nice heavy cable on that open reach out,et lol…ohh my days 😂😊

Great vid del. Any new vids soon?

Reason why we use electrical conduit and mostly emt in the US as you can rewire easily down the road and protects the wires. I would have had to run new cable, being especially how brittle it is and the fact bad corrosion was found. Corrosion Tends to work up the wire. Plus the question is why the corrosion would have to be addressed as well. I won't touch it as to much of a liability and won't want my name associated with it. He at the least called it quits at the end and told her he can't leave it in a unsafe condition.

I hate it when wires are plastered in. Even where I work we had tv's installed on the wall while the canteen was redecorated and they plugged the tv's in and plastered the power leads into the wall.

Could be that water is getting into the boxes from above somehow or other. That might account for why the wall isn’t stained. I think it’s unlikely that it’s an old problem that’s gone away. If it’s still there, it’s going to continue causing problems no matter what you do to the electrics.

It looks like there is an issue with whole circuit possibly. I don’t understand why you didn’t do further tests to ascertain if and what other issues there may be.

I would be outside checking the wall penetrations for the Telephone and the TV Arial or it might be knackered in a few years time!

Never had a problem with damp in that corner ? The corrosion and rust staining say otherwise.

It look like you have a moisture infusion in the wall that's causing green corrosion along with rusting of a metal box .. we had same thing in USA caused by faulty gutter in the corner

Don’t forget that wiring is done to a early regs I would say it would be done to the 16th addition

I'd have multi tooled the skirting off just past the sockets and chased down to the floor,easy fix to put it back on and use some filler to hide the cut, to see how much slack I could find

Top man.

Whats that box on to with sire?the wierd switch box?

It a good point some are making. Why do we use metal back boxes in solid walls. Just the norm and never asked. Why?

Why not cut the baseboard and move the receptacles down or at least get to the slack of the cables or pigtail it where you get the access to the wire behind the baseboard? That said theres obviously moisture getting into that area pretty bad and would think that would need addressed before replacing the electrical that was compromised by that moisture..

I replaced lots of sockets and never ever seen rust like that and were the plug socket above or below the dpm and why do people put plug sockets right above the skirting boards in the first place

Where has all that damp come from must be leaking from somewhere .

Your cavity is probably bridged full of rubble in that corner. Those sockets might be better higher up on the wall.

Was other GPO’s on the ground floor checked for Active to Earth Voltage?

How do u rewire if cables are not placed inside coduits Is this even possible without breaking tiles and wals?

There'll never be any progress on house building methods (still brick built as 100 years ago) as long as the house builders have as big a government lobby as they do. Any and all proposed improvements are watered down or killed outright. Profit above all else

Rising damp is a bummer

"The old sparkys use to say thats your best screwdriver mate" (shows hammer)... proceeds to use a screwdriver as a chisel! Lol 😂😂😂😂

Run outlet trunking

Always bad news when you see sockets sitting on the skirting

Whip the skirting off the cable is coming upwards 👻

I had an electrical box filled to the brim with dead wasps once.

Green is copper rusting, from the water ingress

perfect i enjoyed that

What a mess! We have lots of old housing here in philly There is still plenty of Knob and Tube around, but; I've NEVER seen a mess like that! All those wires in such a small area with the crappiest looking outlets. And left her with no outlets...I understand you guys use a 240V voltage for outlets. You had 240 there; why couldn't you install a new outlet?

Feel sorry for you mate I'm just a competent DIYer who follows the rule ethics with electrics etc but I wouldn't fancy meeting that mess anytime soon & those galv boxes take some hammer but chemically their not bombproof

makes you wonder how bad teh rest is

BT wire not sealed from outside probably

Don't think i saw any internal switch boxes

There are a lot of plants in that room, was someone careless with the watering?

I find with metal back boxes, if you're using bonding plaster, just knocking the round grommet holes in around 2-3mm gives more than enough fixing when plastered in - certainly stronger than rawl plugs and screws although no harm in using both. Sets like rock! Agree whole heartedly on using conduit or similar container to run cables under plaster. Some say plaster eventually eats into the insulation. Not sure about that but pros always use conduit as it makes the circuit fully serviceable/replaceable in the future. Yep, takes more time but its a proper job then.

The wiring looks like a complete firetrap. If the backing boxes have corroded that much the wall is sure to be damp and that alone will deteriorate the cables. A local rewire should be carried out with the correct cable as you could be responsible for any problems in the future.

Originally wired in the 60s or 70s judging by the solid green sleeving. Back in the day, galvanised, or even painted boxes were the norm on cold solid walls. They will all eventually rust due to condensation. I came across a problem a few years ago where RCD was tripping when clothes were being dried in the house. The moisture was condensing and running out the boxes! As the house had recently been rewired with metal boxes screwed to waterproof render, then dry lined , I ended up putting in foam tape to stop the water condensing in the box, and recommended using a vented tumble dryer. Problem never recurred, but plastic boxes would have been the way to go.

Nah...del. no damp there 😅 / thats one of those 10min. jobs everybody talks about 😮

I would remove skirting board .

Lots of wall damp by the look of it andiIf the earthing is bad there its likely to be the same in the rest of the ring main.

Is here name Maggie?

Did you do end to end tests to see if there was an issue? Or IR? What about Ze? In about 15 mins you could’ve had a much clearer picture of the issue

Condem it

Also, before you realised there was an issue you thought a sand and cement mix would solve the problem? They clearly have a damp issue that needs to be fixed. No ones asking you to fix it, but at least advise them to get it resolved before you set another metal back box into damp conditions

Groat far better than sand and cement goes off so quick and far firmer

I would have just rewired the two stockets

I feel absolutely awful for you what a absolute nightmare for you and the home owner especially if they don't have the money at that time to fix it, but I was just wondering what do you do when you go in to do a very simple job like this one, and you are just thinking all it needs is a replacement wall socket and when you remove the faceplate the job turns into can of worms and it looks like the flat/house needs a full rewire to be made safe once again what do you do hypothetical saying if the wiring is a fire risk but the owner refuses to do the work for whatever reason are you still allowed to refuse to switch the power back on or do you have to switch it back on if they say so even after you have notified them of the potential risk especially if other flats or homes could be put at risk one way or another if they have same age of wiring how do you stop this falling back on to you when you done everything right and the flat or home still burns down after you have given the homeowner a warning of the potential risk of fire due to the old wiring.

Is it an outside wall?

I'm honestly just confused on how you don't notice a socket getting to that level of buggered 😂

I would never use those cables again.

So what's causing that corrosion?

There we go breaking the customers heart

As someone about to pass inspection and testing exams and bs7671, anyone got advice for getting your first sparky job?

Always use plastic Backboxes. wont have isuess with dampness then

Is it safe to extend those cables using wagos?

"We've never had an issue with damp". Takes socket off and loads of rust. Hmm. Me thinks there is damp. The yellow stained walls tell a different story.

Those skirting boards are almost as bad.

Why are we still using metal boxes when you can get plastic ones that would be far better they used to be made Marshall tufflex

The customer is a Irish woman

maggie !!

For little bits like thiswouldnt easyfill be a better product to make good. Buy a big bag for pretty cheap and be easily sanded.

Always expect the worse man just saying but good earner but must be done 👍🏿

Rip out the skirting, the flooring, rewire that section. This was painful to watch.

Why skirting two colours just asking 👻🤪

Why skirting two colours just asking 👻🤪he said shall I look at the other one no the hole house man

is this eddie abew lol