This is a fantastic idea - thanks Mike. I'm going to try and get this data - and see if we can establish what the top ten most common dangerous things to look for are.

That two-colour notice seems to be gilding the lily.

A first class example of an pipe style earth clamp retrofit onto 120 year old cable in a manner once common practice but nowadays  deprecated in case the cable collapses with a flash and a bang.

Though  if the Victorian/ Edwardian flat cap types who fitted it had ever wanted to do  earthing they would have probably  soldered straight to it while live without blinking, pausing only to lijght a pipe and make tea while the soldering iron warmed up on the brazier . Presumably nowadays the street is dug up because the upper half of that would originally have been a re-wireable fuse with asbestos pads, but this example was upgraded in about 1970 before the concerns were as strong as today ,when the risk balance has tipped in favour of carrying such things out of the house unopened in plastic bags

Did you check to see if the red iron spreader box is earthed ? I reckon the odds are at best 50/50 ;-) and also more worrying  is that  the mains fuse held in with yellow tape? Still it has new colour tails so it must be OK,

Mike

I think there is a Smart Meter.

That cast iron intake could be from 1894 and still in use

Cardiff power stations - Wikipedia

The general rule is "If it looks dangerous it probably is, if it doesn't look dangerous it probably is dangerous anyway" though it seems that there may be a false sense of security when working around phenolic intakes.

mapj1 said:

Presumably nowadays the street is dug up because the upper half of that would originally have been a re-wireable fuse with asbestos pads

Not sure about that. It seems that removal and replacement of a service head on a live cable is not regarded as safe, whereas the jointing of a live cable is.

My chum had to pay for cutting, extending, and splicing of his service cable when the supply was moved from the construction cabinet to an outbuilding wall although in the event, we had demolished most of the cabinet and dug out the cable so all the lads had to do was to swing the board over to a convenient area of wall.

Of course we could have done that ourselves, but it would have been ever so slightly embarrassing had somebody tripped and pulled the head off the cable.

He never did get an adequate refund.

mapj1 said:

Presumably nowadays the street is dug up because the upper half of that would originally have been a re-wireable fuse with asbestos pads

It would not be a good idea to spray an asbestos pad with water whilst it is inside a live fitting.

Presumably it should be brown tape on a single phase supply?

Did you check to see if the red iron spreader box is earthed ? I reckon the odds are at best 50/50 ;-)

Does it need to be? With the basic insulation on the cores plus a cm or two of hot poured pitch between live conductors and the box, it may well meet today's requirements for double/reinforced insulation.

    - Andy.

Well that 'double insulation' may well be true and certainly would have been solid  at the time of pouring, - but it would be a brave person who was sure that nothing has warmed up and moved in the tar in a hundred odd years. Knowing that something would operate the ADS at the substation if it did touch the cable to the case would be kind of reassuring - though any protective bond there would  need to be rated not for the 100A of the fuse we can see but for the 800A or 400A one out in the street that we cannot see,.

Mike.