Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Power cable joint + speed bump = power cut?
We (me, my husband and a few neighbours) have just been through a 48 hour power cut on Pemberton Road (including a few hours where the power was on in the early hours of Sunday, but when we were in bed). The lovely engineers from UK Power Networks have just put it back on having discovered, seemingly the long and hard way, that the problem was due to a joint in the underground power cable having come undone just outside our neighbour's house, near the boundary with our house (under the pavement, not under the properties).
[I should note here that (a) some people on Pemberton may have had a power cut of a shorter duration - please do not feel that you missed out, it was nothing to write home about and (b) yes, the pneumatic drilling at 6.20 am today was to do with fixing the power outage.]
It just so happens that the point where the cable joint had come undone is in line with where vehicles hit the road coming off a speed bump (Pemberton being a "down" road).
Of course, I can't (yet) prove anything - as has been previously discussed on HoL, absent a costly seismologist's report, proof is tricky - but I will be asking UK Power Networks whether they think it possible that the speed bump was to blame, and I thought I should put this thought out there in case anyone else has had a similar experience or does in the future so we can track whether this is, or becomes, a frequent issue.
Tags for Forum Posts: Pemberton, power cuts, power outage, speed bump
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I think the link with physical damage to our houses is tenuous. The link with damage to our mental health, for which the council are just as culpable, is not.
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Permalink Reply by Bethany Burrow Atherton on
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I'm not convinced either way on damage to houses, other than to think that the repeated juddering, banging and whole-house-moving experience isn't improving the condition of my house. However, my point in the original post relates to services to our houses which are closer to the road.
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Permalink Reply by Lauren on
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Hello, I wondered what was going on! (I live opposite and down a bit). I noticed it yesterday morning and that it was still going on late last night when I went to bed. Was the powercut today? I've been out since the early hours so just wondering if I have a defrosted freezer to look forward to when I get homen :-/
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No, it started on Saturday night and the power went back on at 11 last night (which was what the chaps were doing when you went to bed), so your freezer should be OK - I only remembered just in time that our saved top tier of wedding cake was in our freezer, so managed to move it to a friend's house! To start with, they thought it was just a blown fuse in the Mattison Road substation - they told us twice that they'd fixed it, but we still had no power - it turned out that the reason the fuse had blown was because of the undone cable joint mentioned in my original post, which is why fixing the substation fuse worked for most of the affected houses, but not for us and our few neighbours either side, as that joint links us to the rest of the network. That sequence of events is why it took them until the early hours of Monday to start digging up the pavement. I'm hoping that when I get home tonight they will have finished filling in the holes, but I wouldn't put money on it!
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Permalink Reply by Ian on
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I would take with a pinch of salt the report from UK Power Networks as they are not going to report that sub standard workmanship was responsible for the fault. A buried cable joint filled with resin able to withstand submersion in water underground should not be affected by vibration of vehicles coming off a speed bump.
A cable joint could be described as the weakest link but when done correctly for use in an outdoor hostile environment it should be fit for purpose and therefore is usually never a problem unless done poorly for what ever reason.
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