As mentioned in the "have you been out today" thread, I replaced a slack handful of dodgy dimmer switches at a friend's house. The smell of magic smoke from one of them was quite strong. The electrics in the house were "interesting". Six MCBs, labelled in faded pencil, then crossed out and labelled again. Finding the right one was a matter of turning one off and looking to see if the lights were off. Turning the one off that controlled the downstairs lights didn't turn off the juice to the first switch, which operated some lights, umm, downstairs. I was ready for this, and deployed a multimeter (neither light weight nor racing, I'm afraid). The right MCB controlled those lights AND the 13A sockets in that room.
And then to the loo. Liquid had been seen on the floor, blamed at first on the inaccuracies of a Small Boy, but further investigation determined it to be water coming from the extractor fan. There's a lot of crud in a bathroom extractor fan. Poking around in the loft and a bit of jibbling suggested that the seal where the fan flue exited the roof was banjaxed. A job for someone else another day. However, the water was dripping around the fan motor. As the fan was used as a junction box for the light, merely disconnecting it wouldn't work, so a junction box was obtained, the fan wiring withdrawn into the loft and terminated in the junction box.
All this achieved kneeling on joists, wrapped in fibe glasss and with feet protruding from the loft hatch. Passing Small Children held conversations with those parts of me they could see. A really enjoyable day.
