We have the Power!

Our electrician, Luke, agreed to install some temporary sockets, during our May visit. He had suggested at some point that he could put them in the outside meter cupboard.

In reality he did more than that. He provided us an earth spike, at the north west corner of the steading, close to the old one. He wired the earthing into the meter box, temporarily running it up the steading wall, over the existing large entrance in the west wall and down to the cupboard. He drilled through the wall, put a weatherproof metal cabinet on the inside wall and ran tails through to it. He put a 100A main switch, and wired in a 30A mini ring with MCB, with two double sockets.

We borrowed an old kettle from the In-Laws, bought a 45m 13A extension lead and tested it all out with a good old fashioned cup of tea. The meter reading is exactly what it was when we first bought the property, I do not feel inclined to let SSE know we finally have a supply, until we use a more serious amount of electricity.

As I believe electricians do, he charged us for the goods and separately for his labour. When it comes to the main wiring, we will probably get three quotes for the full job so we get a better idea of what we would expect to pay, even if we go with Luke.

Electricty – we have a supply…

Having accepted the SSE quote to move our electricity supply to a wall that is not to be demolished, we had quite a bit of chasing to do to pin them down to a date. I eventually got hold of the right person in SSE Power & Distribution at Peterhead power station. They will re-route the cable, but cannot move the meter. They wanted me to sort this out with SSE Metering, in the end SSE Metering refused to deal with me and I put it back to SSEPD. Miraculously they all agreed to do the work on 29th December. I got our digger man, George, lined up for doing the trenching the day before.

The Meter box – Shortly after arriving in Aberdeen, I went to Jewsons on the Parkway, produced my passport and got my account enabled. I then trogged across town, horrendously slowly, to the far side of Union Square to the Jewsons that sold the meter cupboards. I was rather appalled to find that a meter box and a ‘hockey stick’ were about £95, I put it on the account, then dumped them at the steading. The following day, I went over to Altens to hire a 36V cordless SDS drill, then to Ellon Timber to get some bagged sharp sand – 24 x 25kg. I took half the sand, dumped it and went back for the rest. We then gave it a go at drilling holes for the meter box using one of my Hilti bits. I was expecting a bit of a struggle, but not so. The bit sank easily into granite and I soon had the holes drilled. Getting the drill back to Altens was not that easy – again town was gummed up so I gave up and took the drill back the following day.

Finding the power supply – On boxing day, I dug into the ground above where I hoped the cable was. It was predictably hard and stony, I used my post digger to chip out stones until I could use the spade to clear the hole. After an hour or so, I saw a bit of yellow plastic about 60cm down. As I uncovered it, I saw that it was indeed the warning tape for the cable, exactly where it should be. Digging further, I discovered what looked like a cable, but well to one side of the tape. Another 10cm down and below the yellow tape, I found a second cable, it ran out of a conduit just at the edge of my hole. I then spent much of the rest of the day widening the hole to make it workable.

Lucky strike – I found the cable first go.

The top cable is the power, the other turned out to be a plastic water pipe.

Digging the trench – George appeared two days later with his digger on a low loader pulled by a tractor. He was at work within 20 minutes and had dug out a 9 meter trench 60cm deep after another hour, using his narrow bucket. He agreed to come back the following day to back-fill the trench, but was a bit skeptical about whether SSE would turn up. I fixed the meter box on the wall using stainless A2 4.5mm 60mm screws, the bottom two holes were a bit loose because they had drilled into lime mortar.

George got stuck in,it took about an hour to get this dug.

The trench is about 60cm deep.

With a short branch round to where our new meter box is.

Moving the supply – The following day, the 29th, we were on site by about 9.15 and eventually saw a green SSE van pull up at Mains of Leask, to ask directions. Two old boys appeared, who got straight to work, laying new cable and doing things with bits of electrical fitting. Another green van stopped at Mains of Leask, this was the metering man. Between them they dug out the old cable to the old meter box and joined it to the new, firstly the live core – they said there was a fuse on the power line but did not see the need to break the supply – then the neutral sleeving/armour. They used a blowtorch to shrink a plastic sleeving over the join. They thought the second cable was actually a water pipe. After about 2 hours they had connected the meter, covered the cable with sharp sand and were gone. George duly back-filled the trench and it was done. I had half the sand left over.

SSE dug from my holeover to the old meter, to pull the old cable out.

The cable is in, with blinding (sand) and safety tape.

The cable runs up to the walland into the hockey stick.

The old meter instlledi n the new cabinet.

Jill inspecting the finished job.

 

Electricity

We had mixed messages about the state of the power supply to the steading, although the seller said early on that Yes, it was there. On inspection, we discovered not one but two meter boxes, some dodgy-looking wiring in the steading building and a tangle of external wires that may have taken power to other buildings on the site. Later we looked at a photo from the ASPC website showing some of the wires going to our second, smaller building. I expect that the builders working on the adjacent site must have done the damage when they demolished the old farmhouse. The meters looked live and, during a visit in April 2014, looked as though the builders may have been using power from them – the covers had been levered off the boxes and damaged.

So we had several issues to sort out with SSE, the network power company for Aberdeenshire. Why were there two meters? Were they supplying the adjacent property as well as our own? Was our supply suitable for a domestic property? How do we get our meter away from the wall it is mounted on – it is the one that must be demolished and re-built.

Why were there two meters? One (a standard credit meter) was for the steading, the other (a pre-pay meter) was for the now-demolished farmhouse. I was not allowed to ask for the latter to be removed – I contacted the owner of the adjacent property, he contacted SSE and they agreed to remove the unwanted meter shortly after. Which they did.

The south-facing end of the west leg of the steading – we know this needs to be partially demolished and shortened.

Were either of the meters supplying the adjacent property? I could not get a straight answer on this, but we now think not. I have not heard anything after the second meter was removed, I expect this is for the right reason – it really was surplus to requirements.

Was our supply suitable for supplying a domestic property? We were told to get an electrician to check the wiring. It is obvious that the wiring in the steading is very poor and needs stripping out, I was more concerned about whether the incoming supply was sufficient.

How do we get our meter away from the wall it is mounted on? I tried various SSE phone numbers and ended up at SSE Connections & Engineering, who explained the process. They have an online form that looked intimidating to the uninitiated, but turned out to be creative and quite entertaining. They wanted diagrams showing what I wanted to do, I used Paint on my PC to doctor some of the photographs we had taken, drawing lines and adding text to explain.

I thought we should move the meter from the current location on the south wall of the west leg, all the way round to the north wall, to put it closer to where we would want the consumer unit. However, in order to run the cable on my property it has to go close to the steading wall, past what is currently a large side opening. We will need to fill this in and it may need proper foundations, in which case the cable may be in the way. It would then have worked its way past where we need to run our incoming water pipe and where we will be opening up the doorway to the garage. In the end we decided to move the meter just half way to the west-facing wall, well out of harms way – around 9 meters from the current location.

We submitted the form and SSE responded quite quickly, with a quote and a crude network diagram. Our supply crosses the field to our west on poles (3-phase), dives into the ground at the west boundary of next door’s property and goes underground onto our property more or less in a straight line towards out meter box. I was naïve and supposed that SSE would come on site, dig out the cable, re-route it and make good. Alas, I need to arrange everything including materials, they come along after I have uncovered the supply cable, I clean up afterwards. Fortunately I have both a digger man and an electrician on hand. I accepted the quote and paid the £498.37. I was asked to contact SSE Mapping Services for a more accurate diagram of where their supply runs. It arrived by email the following day and was actually no different to the first map, other than showing next-door’s supply – a useful nugget. I would not stake my life on the quality of their mapping.