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Ouch

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narked:
Can vouch for that one too!

Asbestos mains are tricky to work around! Luckily we had some room to negotiate who was going to foot the bill as the water board denied there being any asbestos pipe down there in the first place.

Sider:

--- Quote from: "Bigbluemaverick" ---Just for interest why did you feel obliged to claim compo? No harm no foul?
--- End quote ---


Because a clause in most contracts that involve earth moving says that the main contractor is responsible for locating any and all services, mark them clearly, and responsible for any damage caused to or by unmarked services.

No harm caused this time (other than the supply cut and lost time for the contractor, which could result in other projects being delayed), but mistakes like that could easily cost in the 100s of thousands of £s, or at worst, a life.

My company drilled with a piling rig through a 40k volt mains, feeding one of the towers in Canary Warf. Main contractor's insurance had to fork out in the region of £150k, and that was just compensation to our company, for damage to the rig and risk to personnel. I was led to believe that the final amount between compensations and H&SE fines exceeded £2 million.

According to the lads on site, the spark was at least 30 feet in height :D

SimonHarwood:

--- Quote from: "The Landy Guy" ---last week i was working at a new housing development site in Telford,

me and a work mate were putting in some new gates and i was digging the post holes!

I started to dig a hole out by the garden wall, with the grafta when i got a spark and a burst of flames come out from the hole!

I had hit a mains cable!!! 240v!!!!

The site manager told us there were no cables anyware near where were digging! The company i work for took them to court and claimed 2k, for miss instruction!!


--- End quote ---

:o Do you have any more pics?
How deep was it buried? Was it a single or multicore cable? Which side of the wall was it? If on the road side there may have been an illuminated road sign or lamp post near there in the past. If it was on the garden side it may have been a feed into whatever is/was there before.
Some cable-jointers have a habit of just capping off the end of a disused cable rather than backtracking it and disconnecting it at source - probably because they don't know where the supply end is. I saw some doing that when disconnecting the old lamp posts and connecting the new ones along my street.

redhand:
It what they have CAT cable detectors for. We weren't allow to dig anywhere unless someone had swept the digline for pipes and cables.

I know of a welsh farmer who cut through a National Grid cable and the repair bill was £75K the cable was oilfilled and had to be man handled in sections  almost half a mile from the nearest track. and spliced together took em 4 days to repair the damage.

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