Superb video, thank you for posting. The original lead sheathed cable runs were so beautifully installed. It’s amazing how much more pride tradesmen took in their work 100 years ago.

It's not just about the £5 they were making on FIT, it was about the money they were saving by not importing from the grid during the day.

The storage heater story made me laugh as it was exactly what we did as soon as we moved into our cottage. The storage heater wiring was like something out of a 70's Dr Who set. I sent the steel boxes for scrap and am using the bricks for lots of projects. They're really nice, a pleasant burgundy colour. Unfortunately I no longer allow 'qualified electricians' into my house. Two very bad experiences with appalling standards of workmanship have totalled my trust in them. Twenty years working in theatre and the music industry including designing and installing the cabling in lighting grids etc I think adequately qualifies me to make an infinity better job as I really care about my own house both safety wise and usability wise. All service header fuses say 100A on them regardless of the value of the cartridge. Really interesting video, thanks.

I've always been taught live is Brown because "that's the colour your trousers go if you touch it"

Great useful content GH! Thanks for taking the time to explain in detail and share - much appreciated.

A nice well presented video, great to see all those hazards identified and removed in favour of up an up to date and safe installation. Well done.

very interesting -- thank you! I imagine every old house has a fire-hazard hidden in the walls or floors - mine did. I opened a wall one day and found a loose connection (no junction box) arcing and sparking, and sitting in a pile of ancient wood shavings.

Well that was a right mess beforehand! Looks like I wired it, and my electrical experience consists of making a few dry solder joints and being so paranoid that I basically try to shut off power to my entire town before fiddling with any wiring.

Another great interesting video, thank you. I used to work for an ISP and the one thing that stood out for me was a damaged network cable with the twisted pairs held together by sellotape. I mean it wasn't even electrical tape!! The EMI in a domestic setting is far less of a risk than in industrial, so power and network run alongside in my house too, with no issues.

glad to hear you're moved in at last and looking forward to seeing that video

Really enjoy these updates, a pleasure to watch you take pride in your work and get bits done. Got our own renovation project starting in a few months and nice to be able to steal some ideas! Would appreciate some info or a video on the fibre link you've installed between the house and outside office. Keen to future proof and put some fibre in sensible places round my new place! Thanks!

Hi Andy, I have solar panels here in Whitley Bay. We have had them for approx 6 years and usually make around £500 per year. Our energy provider pays money directly into our account every quarter. (On 2nd August we received £31.00 deemed payment and £179 Generation payment).They cost us £4.400 to install and the company estimated that it would take roughly 6-7 years to break even. We live in a bungalow and the rear of the property is South facing 😁 which is good, as according to the installation company, orientation is everything ! So they can be profitable, but obviously if your property is not in a good position, then you are wasting your time. It's amazing what you can find when renovating old property! When you see some of the bodge ups (especially with electrics) it's amazing there are not more house fires! Another great vid. Keep them coming😁👍

A very interesting video, thanks. Regarding data and power cables, electric vehicle chargers are often supplied through an armoured cable that has combined power and data, so clearly not a significant issue, as you say.

Andy, this is a very good piece of content. My father in law was an electrician and I did lots with him over the years but I know my limitations. I have just moved into a 2003 build house where lighting junctions are in the switch boxes not the ceiling roses so I will seek competent help if I need to. I was dealing with my daughter's house some years back and found one power socket run off the 6mm supply to the power shower. There were other howlers in that house as well but we stripped it all out for a full rewire. My work passed the full inspection so I was pleased but my electrician did the final connections and testing. Fortunately I have a trusted electrician who I am happy to pay to do work now.

in Argentina is blue for N and brown/red for live but we must use bipole breakers. Neutral cables are not shared in a bus bar

Loving the series Andy - thank you for taking the time to detail what you're doing! I found some dodgy wiring in my last house; the neighbour's ex husband (only ever referred to as 'that ar*ehole') was a qualified spark. He had installed a couple of additional sockets in one of the bedrooms - I was initially impressed to find that the ring had been extended properly, with a spur also running off the first new socket to the second, however when I started to look closer he had run a single length of T&E from the ring to the first socket with an additional single piece of wire. The earth was carrying current (scary as the earth in 2.5mm T&E has a smaller sectional area than Live & Neutral!) and there was no earth protection whatsoever on the circuit. I know that it's unlikely to be sucking a huge current draw in that location but being a children's bedroom at the time the consequences didn't bear thinking about. The fact that he was a qualified professional means he knew the risks he was taking with other people's lives. I ripped it all out to find that no sheathing/conduit had been used in the chase either. Our kitchen electrics had been 'blessed' by the same genius previously too - good luck finding an earth signal on half of those sockets! I like to do my own work when it comes to electrics in the house but always get it commissioned by a trusted and qualified pro!

Love your channel. Awesome work my friend..

So someone's probably already commented on this (probably with a lot of 'boo, EU, evil' noise), we switched to the brown and blue (brown black grey, blue, green/yellow, to be specific) to harmonise with the EU (other members also had various other schemes prior to this), and the primary reason is to ensure conductors can be distinguished by the colour blind. Specifically the striped CPC (earth, ground..) is highly identifiable even with full colour blindness, however unlike the prior scheme, all phases and neutral can be distinguished with any form of single colour blindness. Now, we did switch the CPC to striped in.. the late 70s, I believe, but it was later decided to harmonise fully because, honestly, it makes more sense than everyone having different schemes, and is slightly better in terms of colour blindness.

20:25 wow that's some shocking electrics you have there. Looking forward to the renovation of your home. Its going to be great with a before and after comparison.

My mates workshop has 3 phase, He now has Blues that are lives (3 phase) and blues that are neutrals. Genius!

Excellent, informative video. Great!

Really good explanation Andy , bloody horrific that . Someone needed a good ticking off . Shoddy workmanship hacks me off . As someone who spent 35 years in construction . I have seen things that would make us weep .

Andy - Good overview of the ‘as was’ and the sort out. Nothing surprised me and it is worse in new builds. The whole aspect of building control and regulation of the electrical trades ( and plumbers/and so called gas engineers) needs a massive shake up. The race to the bottom on price and tradesman who do not know what a days work is and/or have absolute no pride in their work is endemic. This based on my personal experience of buying a new house (1999) from a supposedly quality house builder.

Very interesting , some times it can say on the incoming supply carrier 100 ams but this is more to do with the rating of the carrier not necessarily the fuse size it contains. A point of interest regards to dis board blanks they now should be the type that clip over the bus bar . Also the supply going to the outside studio is possibly not compliant with current regulations if the earth is not separated from the house , via the use of an earth spike and a main RCD mounted within the studio . The electrical regulations change so fast these days and keeping on board with the latest dictate is a minefield , and even then they can often be open to interpretation and will generate much debate among electrical contractors . Very glad I’m retired and free from all the hassle . Best wishes and kind regards as always 😀👍👍👍

Looking at the photo of the old CU, the neutral bar appears to be fed from the *supply* side of the switch, meaning there was no double-pole isolation, just isolation of the line conductor. Also, - my god - I've never seen so many wires jammed in the top of a main switch before :o

In Australia, Lines are red, white and blue, while neutral is black. Flexible cables are brown for live and blue for neutral. In appliances, all other colours can be used except for yellow and green or a combination of those two.

The switch from red + black to brown and blue was to bring us in line with the same colours the EU were using I believe - They wanted to make it consistent all round the EU so everyone knew which cables were which

I made an Italian pizza oven and a barbecue from fire bricks out of one of the old heaters, great job!

I rented a flat in Turkey and the electrical work there was frightening. There was one socket with the earth wired to live, I got a shock off that. Another socket didn't work, when I checked none of the wires had been connected to the socket. When we bought an electric shower the guy who fitted it found the wires it needed to be connected to, removed insulation, he then put on washing up gloves and twisted the wires together. He didn't disconnect the power whilst doing this.

On rewireing a 1960’s house we found a nest like that and we were sleeping above it 😲 we only did this because when trying to fit a light in the dining room the wires crumbled and were told by a qualified electrician it needed replacement. Never again a nightmare !

Interesting video thanks for sharing An RCD will only trip if there's an earth leakage fault, so a bulb blowing shouldn't cause this to trip but may cause your MCB to trip hope that makes sense.

Shows the value of a visual examination. Often better than plugging a tester in

I love the way they notched the top of the floor joists to accept the electrics.

We used to have electrics like that and the best part about it was they were put in by Yorkshire Electricity. Everytime we had something new they would add another metal box to the power supply. We ended up with a wall in the larder that looked like Battersea Power Station. Thankfully my nephew is an electrician and we now have an electrical system that is both efficient and neat and tidy.

And I thought thing were bad here in the US.... you definitely had your hands full with that mess! good thing you're rewiring the house... lots of fire traps. could you imagine the in floor splice that was wrapped blowing out and starting a fire... scary! even here in N.A. (USA) stuff like that's totally illegal!

MCB's protect against overloads and short circuits therefore protecting the cables & equipment attached to the cables. An RCD protects against an imbalance between the supply current & return current. This might happen if you were touching a live part & the current was "returning" through you to ground. Therefore protecting the consumer. An RCD won't protect against overcurrent or all types of short circuits. An RCBO does the work of both a MCB & RCB in one unit. Brilliant video btw.

22:30 and that's why even though I'mnot an electrician I learnt on my own and now I do all the electric work around my house as it should be

regarding data cabling, in this country it is regulated to be separate from power, to make it safer as a decorator/renovator will not be able to bang a nail into a wall and join comms wires to a live electric wire and create a dangerous situation for comms workers. no one in a data centre will be hanging any pictures on the walls.

It was red & black cables then we changed colours to brown & blue match EU standardisation. Also changed the colours of 3 phase stuff as well.

Joseph Swan...proud it is I am. But I think even our Joe would have been aghast at those electrics! 🤣💞

If you think those electrics are bad Andy you should see some of the nightmare scenarios Delroy from Eastway Electrical finds himself in,he's been a spark for years but mind you he sometimes makes me cringe while watching his videos,if you have time which I doubt very much at the moment take a wee look at him,loving the series of videos on the new house by the way but missing all you other Tips and Testing content,hope you get back to that someday,I use your tape measure all the time now so managed to throw off the old imperial conversion calculations habit like us old guys always do,looking forward to the next episode

Night storage heaters and solar really makes no sense on so many levels. Great videos, looking forward to seeing your extension finished.

The FiT is sold with the house as it's considered part of the fixtures and fittings, it's also part of the value of the house.

In Australia we use the same standard as UK / Black/Red then switched to Blue/Brown. I think the reason to change to Brown active and Blue neutral was to unify the colour codes across all of Europe (and a couple of other countries) so there was no chance of confusing anything with any of the old colour codes that were mismatched everywhere. Makes more sense than the US having black as "hot" and white as neutral :).

WOW looking at this it looks like a HOT MESS. I live in the US and am thankful for our wiring standards. I recently rewired a friend's home with him (we were supervised by a Master Electrician). We wired the house for a 200 amp service (he has a garage shop with a welder) as an upgrade from 100 amp. I do understand the reasoning for what you did. It just seems odd to me. We ended up running each line and labeling it clearly in a 1.2m x 1.2m square on a basement wall for future clarity and ease of servicing.

Even when I was in GCSE I could put wires together better than that... just wow!

Smart meters will go the same way as solar panels did in this video is my Friday night thought on this after drinking a bottle of wine.

The wire colours changed because if you're red/green colour blind (the most common form of colour blindness) then then red and green wires look identical... which is bad for obvious reasons.

Also I would get mini rcbos for every circuit and install a feed for a car charger for the future 👍🏻

At least they taped it up, I've done the same when I didn't have a jbox at the time.

In my rural neighborhood, many of the residents do their own electrical work, and I think it's legal to do so, but not always a good idea. Back in 1970 in our old farmhouse, I added extensively to the 1946 original wiring, but I called upon an electrical-savvy neighbor to check my work and make the connection to the breaker panel. We may be generally dealing with half of the UK voltage in the US, but 120 volts can kill or start fires, too. That taped-together mess that you found was a tragedy waiting to happen.

An MCB only protects against over current. An RCD only protects against earth leakage faults. An RCBO combines both functions.

Sounds like I made the right choice when I switched away from Eon. Luckily I never had to deal with their customer "service"

Back in the early 1980's, I knew a guy who was apprentice trained with The London Electricity Board (LEB). He passed all his exams and qualifications and was personally NICEIC certified. He told me that his LEB training had even included 3-phase wiring for industrial applications, working on switchgear in power stations and outside power installations "up poles and on pylons". He said to me that you must respect electricity because: You can't see it, You can't hear it, You can't smell it. So always switch off/disconnect/isolate and test for current before working on wiring. Thank you for your uploads Gosforth Handyman. Stay safe and well.

Here in the USA, I've seen red and black for the hot side and white for neutral. Red is usually used for the alternate phase, so a red-black hookup would be 240V. Red is also sometimes used for a switched hot-side wire. I'm not surprised about the RCDs causing false trips; I installed a combination ground-fault/arc-fault interrupt for one circuit that seemed a bit suspect, and the first thing I noticed was that the light in the back entrance hall always tripped it. I rewired the return for that, which the builder had hooked up to the neighbor's side, to solve that problem, but it will still trip with the use of a number of older appliances, especially those with brush-motors. I had a 1978 wood-console TV (hot-chasssis, no mains transformer) until a few years ago and that had to run off an extension cord to a different circuit. I don't think these smart breakers were designed to be used with the sparky appliances and bodgy wiring that was considered normal 50 or 60 year ago.

Wow! An Ediswan lamp! Everyone knows the lightbulb was invented by Swan in Newcastle! ;)

Ah 'qualified' elecchickens! In my old house we had a bathroom water leak so I ripped up the floor & on inspecting the wiring for a downstairs ceiling rose found the downstairs lighting ring joined by twisting it together & covering each wire in paper masking tape. The house had been 'professionally rewired' about 3 years before I bought it & I'd not touched the electrics since. I contacted the company whose receipt was in all the docs I got with the house about the poor work & they basically laughed at me saying PROVE IT WAS US. Lovely. I do all my own electrics, being fully competent & aware of the regs. Part P be damned, there's no indemnity or guarantee the work a spark does just because their van has a sticker on it.

I think the same people worked on your house as worked on a school I taught at in West Newcastle (Slateyford to be precise, it's gone now). I was a physics teacher and wanted to shut the outlets off down one side of the lab to be safe, I opened the breaker that indicated that side of the lab, checked that the power was off; it wasn't. There were several breakers for different parts of the lab none of them worked. They'd wired everything through one breaker!

Dear God Andy. That original setup is a rat's nest. I can see so much bare copper inside that CU, including on the incoming tails!!!! Given the heat in that cupboard I'm surprised the house needed storage heaters!! 😁

Not an electrician, but your tech looks similar to what we have in Australia (unsurprisingly, being the old penal colony) We tend to have more circuits in each house, each with their own RCDs. Nowadays even lighting circuits must have their own RCD installed.

I don't think anyone else has mentioned it, so to answer your question Andy: RCD - Residual Current Device - cuts the power if it detects an imbalance between the current flowing down the line and neutral. This would happen if there was a leakage to earth via maybe a damp connection, or perhaps a person! They're usually set to 30mA in domestic installations, which is likely to be low enough to avoid death but high enough to avoid nuisance trips. MCB - Miniature Circuit Breaker - cuts the power if the current exceeds the rating. Think of it as an electronic fuse. RCBO - Residual Circuit Breaker with Overcurrent protection - basically an MCB and RCD in one box.

Have you considered asking the utility company to install a 100A isolator so that if you are working on the consumer unit you don't have to pull incoming 100A fuse and have to have it sealed by the elecy board Excellent videos Brian

RCBOs also offer double pole isolation for the relevant circuits, which is a plus.

Definitely looking forward to your next video. I live in a house that has storage heaters and during the winter it costs around £6 a day to run them (only 3 are used) definitely want them gone! But unsure what to go with as an alternative.

I'm glad you at minimum replaced that circuit board, and if your happy that the existing remaining electrics are safe, then there's defo no reason for a full rewire.

RCBOs are called GFIs (Ground Fault Interrupter) here in the US.

Excellent video. Like many of us, I have experienced even newer houses have 'spaghetti' wiring add ons. How did you find DC electrics, cooling etc? Multiple 1MW diesel gen sets, UPS systems etc. Another world, however great experiences!

a bad nail could put 240 volts down your data cables, thats why they should be away from them, its not about messing up the data

As my old uncle used to say: Red to red Black to Black Blue to pieces! Thanks for making my Friday night.. Again!

That distribution box is far newer than mine. I still have fuse wire and fuses in my box. I swapped supplier but nPower continued to bill me for 5 months even tho they wasnt my supplier.. Ended up blocking their payments via the bank, then nPower took a futher 6 months to reimburse me my overpayment and the money they robbed off me.

When we moved into our 1969 bungalow and wanted the consumer unit changed some sparks were saying it would need a full rewire before even coming when the CU was changed and all tested the electrician doing the testing commented that the results were better than a lot of new / nearly new builds he had tested / inspected. Totally agree that ripping out perfectly good wire just to keep the scrap man and Screwfix happy is frankly nonsensical.

My 1920 house (gas heating and gas oven) had exactly 2 fuses for the entire house... worst electrical connection I ever saw (not in mu house that one) was wires held together with bandaids.

I've spent the day preparing for having a 3 bed semi rewired (I was left the house in a will). Some's still the original 1950's black rubber sheath, some's grey but old & all of it's very odd indeed, with a mix of ring & radial, upstairs & downstairs split on two circuits for sockets but NOT by which floor they're on. One single socket on the landing on its own fuse. I'll rip the lot out, install new pattress boxes, chase the walls, run all the cable, then have a certified electrician do the final connecting & testing. Happy days...

22:00 How could the bathroom storage heater be off the socket ring - it would have been on all the time as it wouldn’t have passed via the off-peak contactor?

Light bulbs mainly tripped MCBs because they sometimes short out when they blow. The reasoning behind putting the lighting on the non-RCD side was mainly to keep the lights on even if something plugged into a socket tripped the RCD. Electricians can be a bit paranoid and many didn't install RCDs unless they were absolutely required to, which is why split-load CUs were a thing. On what's known as a TT system (the earths are only connected to a rod outside) you've had whole-house RCD protection for ages and voltage-operated ELCBs before that. RCBOs combine the functionality of an RCD (trips in case of a current imbalance, e.g. because someone drives a nail between the line and CPC conductor of some T&E in the wall) and an MCB (trips in case someone overloads the circuit by plugging in three or four electric fires and a kettle and in case of a short-circuit), which is quite handy. This RCBO is probably for the electric shower based on the wire size. Could have been the cooker but that's less likely, I'd guess the cooker was one of the B32s on the left. The immersion tank was probably one of the B16s. The sticker says 100 amps because that's the rating of the whole cutout. That odd patch to the left of the light switch looks to me as if it might have been the position of the original light switch, probably lovely brass tumbler switches on wooden pattresses.

Black and Red swaped to Blue and Brown so everyone could see a difference between them - even if they were colourblind. There is a colourblind state where they are virtually identical - thus dangerous. "Colour blindness affects approximately 1 in 12 men (8%) and 1 in 200 women (0.5%) in the world." I worked with a guy who was red green colour blind and one of my best mates is pink/blue colourblind.

I feel for you, for the poor experience you’ve had with Eon. I’ve had to put up with their rubbish too. Utterly dreadful company, I would rather get my electricity from a nuclear reactor that is on the verge of a meltdown, than deal with those tossers again.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. I subscribe to your channel and love your work ethic and envy your skills. I suspect you know more about electrics than you are letting on and I'm sure you know that most electricians would not solely rely on a volt stick to test for a dead circuit. I also suspect that in your tool box you have a multi-meter that would test for voltage across L and N etc.

There was no requirement for lighting to be RCD until the powers that be decided that ALL cables buried in the wall under 50mm needed 30mA RCD protection, which is pretty much all the housing stock in the UK.

Thls house would have had electrics from new. My grandma lived in a similar aged house in South Gosforth overlooking the railway. It had electric from new. My present house was built around 1912 and built with gas lighting but was converted to electricity in the 1920's we think. Supply used to come in via overhead pole. Still does but now comes out ot the ground up the pole then down the pole back underground to the new meter box. Last pole in the street supplying about eight houses. We found an old electricity supply company label on the wooden board that everything was mounted on and we still have some defunct remnants of lead cable in the loft.

Really interesting... where I am from in the US we would never be allowed to have a junction box ( = a spur?) behind a wall or under a floor, without an access panel (i.e. not under built-in carpet etc). It's considered a long-term fire hazard. I didn't know that was allowed here! Makes me wonder if I've got any junctions in my Victorian terrace. From what I remember of putting in a new porch light in the US our wires were: black = hot, white = neutral, green or a bare copper wire sometimes = earth ("ground"). I have never worked with E.on but I had a really, really awful time switching from British Gas. Swore them off completely forever, and that was just changing suppliers, not changing any hardware! My new supplier (Bulb) is supposed to start reading my older model smart meters sometime this year but I am not holding my breath.

In residential US electrical, we use red and black for the 240VAC hot conductors, white for the neutral, and bare or green for ground (earth).

Simple L1 is Brown, L2 is Black, L3 is Gray, N is Blue, PE is Yellow and Green, And we have allso PEN where Netural and Grounding is still pownd together before the consumer unit is installed. But that covers the basics. There is alot more as we got seprete categories for ac and dc and low and high voltage for both. And RCD is needed for anything for consumer units.

Normally while, or also gray, white w/color stripe for neutral, normally black or red (or other), green grounding, for 120/240vac residential. In our area metal conduit is required for residential electric. Accepted commercial 3 phase 120/208/230 black ,red, and blue, 277/480 brown, orange, yellow, but not required by national electric code

That house is being future proofed , if only all trades had your dedication to their chosen trade

Good Video Gos, Just an observation... why is there 2 No exposed bus bars on the left hand side of the DB when it was previously energised ?

In the US we use the following: Black is the hot/live wire White is the neutral wire Bare copper or green is the ground/earth wire Red is a traveling power wire (three way switches)

An RCBO is basically an MCB and an RCD combined into one unit, you would install one RCBO per circuit, so if that circuit trips its only that circuit that trips and all others remain on, it stands for "Residual current breaker with overcurrent protection" RCB-O

in Iceland, before the current brown, blue, yellow-green standard, the colors used to be black, blue, yellow green. before that, in very old houses that you could find red live and blue or black neutral and white earth. sometimes if there was a shortage of imported material, the electricians of the past made up their own colour scheme with what they had.

Those incoming cables look like they might be single insulated. This is not allowed in Australia unless it is metal armored cables.

In Canada normally black is the live wire and white is the neutral for 110 amp circuit. . Bare copper or green wire will be ground and if using 220 amp there will also be a red wire which is live.

Amazing no one was electricuted or a fire!Looks great now though!As usual with solar panels etc,there's more to it all than the sugar coated stories they are sold on!

The colors were harmonized all over Europe. They used colors not used before so there was no confusion anywhere. Germans used to have red as earth. You can see an obvious problem in importing German products to UK.

@3:39 Here in The Great Industrial Northeast across the pond, 110/120v electric is black = hot, white = neutral, and bare copper = ground. 220v has the addition of one extra wire that is hot and it is red. 12v is a different story. It can be one of two ways. Black = hot and white = neutral OR Red = hot and black = neutral. Many people get easily confused with 12v wiring. The trade off is it's not usually deadly if you make a mistake.

Dodgy electrics are a quite common thing in older properties, I found things like wires just stuck in the connection block of a socket without a screw holding the wire, cabling which had been sawn in by a plumber removing some redundant heating pipes, he did cut into the copper of the neutral but did hit the live as well and missed the copper by a hair! Earth still connected to copper water pipes in the house but with a plastic water mains coming in, so no working earth other than from copper pipes in dry floors and walls, faulty RCD's. First thing I did was getting an earth pin with new earth wiring to the consumer unit installed, and I'm checking over all wiring and replace as needed or fix dodgy things. After that a new consumer unit will go in and a sparky will be contracted to check everything over before power is going on again. And btw, I will also have the electric network administrator put in a mains breaker and overload protection instead of the wire fuse so that I can switch off power to the consumer unit, and I do have an SPD in my new consumer unit.

Interesting video...Point of safety. It's bad practice to use those voltage detection wands as a means of testing for dead. Use a proper meter or dead testing unit (one where you physically connect it to the terminals). I'm sure your case, after throwing over the mains switch on the board, everything would be off, but you can never be sure. Stay safe.

I saw that BG consumer unit and went oh no there's got to be at least 1 thing wrong inside... The RCBO neutral leads are stranded cable, so should have a new ferrule crimped on the end if the installer cuts the original end off and shortens them. I'm sure there's a regulation on this, but I'm not sad enough to know the number. I also know that all conductors should enter through the same knockout. Your earth is going through it's own hole compared to the meter tails. Also how come no surge protection fitted? These points are a bit picky, but a sparky shouldn't be making these errors.

@gosforthhandyman - please consider using a proper voltage indicator to prove dead, especially on a crazy mess like this. The indicator pens are useful, but really should not be used to confirm a circuit is dead.

@27:25 My house was built in 1922 and it still has some of the original knob and tube wiring in it. BRRRR (me visibly shuttering).

Fixed stranded wiring colours in Australia are: Red, White, Blue - Active conductors (the old colour system that changed in the 70's used - Red, YELLOW, Blue) Black - Neutral Green/Yellow - Earth Here you may find 1, 2 or 3 phase used in a domestic installation. Service fuses might be 63A or 80A These colours apply from the 240V systems up to the max. 500kV distribution systems. Flexible stranded cables (appliance leads) that are NOT to be used as fixed wiring are: Brown, White, Blue - Actives Black - Neutral Green/Yellow - Earth The exception to this are 1 phase leads (240V) that use Brown, Blue, Green/Yellow I once had a boss that asked me to wire up some 3 phase + N extension leads.... that had the Brown, White, Blue, Black, G/Y colours. The idiot abused me for using Black as Neutral. I packed up my tools and walked out.... told him to go back to school. I worked for years manufacturing control panels and installations at power stations here in Aus. A Grey wire colour is used for 110V D.C. instrumentation supply/functions... D.C. being the essential services supply, fed from large battery banks. We used the typical Red + , Black - for the 220V D.C. distribution application... stuff like essential services supply to bearing oil pumps. And, Main Earth conductors for telecommunications services are Purple.... connected to a separate Earth stake. You NEVER see bare copper Earth conductors in a modern manufactured sheathed cable. The only bare 'Earth" conductor would be a coax shield or drain wire in a high voltage cable. Your house wiring is an example of why I very rarely work on domestic installations... too much potential for encountering dodgy DIY = DIE stuff. I'm surprised you hadn't found any crappy old VIR insulated cable. Frankly... safer to work in heavy industrial sector with systems at 240V up to that 500kV where every worker is highly qualified and high accountable.