Q. How many electricians does it take to change a meterbox?

Hmm, August now. Since my last post it has actually rained quite a bit. Tanks are full (and overflowing in the wrong places), but it hasn't been raining so much that my soak is insufficient. In other words, I still haven't had to discharge any stormwater to the street!

But, to get back to the point of today's topic, I have a bit to say to bring you up to date with the state of my underfloor heating. Disclaimer: this may sound like a lot of complaining, but as I've said several times I think the main point of my blog is to remind myself (and anyone else contemplating building) about all the bad things that happened. So just sit back and enjoy the fact that it hasn't happened to you.

One of the requirements for the underfloor heating is to have 3-phase, off-peak power. I conveyed this information to my builder early on, or rather I tried to convey it, but through a series of unfortunate incidents they did not get the message that I needed a larger meterbox (because it needs to hold 3 meters and a lot more circuit breakers) before the brickwork was complete. And they did not manage to tell the electrician that it needed to be upgraded before the electricity was connected.

So a couple of months ago the electrician finally turned up to try to fit a bigger meterbox. To say that this was a debacle is an understatement. Prior to this there had been several false starts. He had first scheduled this event to occur a month or so prior, but by the time it came around he had forgotten about it! So ETSA turned up to change over the meters and there was no electrician. He rescheduled a few weeks later and this time ETSA failed to turn up. Or so it seemed. Actually, ETSA had changed their procedure in the intervening time so that they now expected the electrician to disconnect power from the site at the pole and they would come by to fit the new meter and reconnect the power. But the electrician didn't know this so at first he thought it was another false start.

But eventually the power went off (8:30 am) and he got going -- I believe he actually disconnected everything in the old box before he realised that, while the new box was taller and would accommodate 3 meters, it would not accommodate any more breakers. In addition, as this board had the breakers at the bottom instead of the top like the old one, it would mean extending the wires for all of the circuits in order to reach the new breaker positions. After some discussions with the electrician for the underfloor heating he decided that with a bit of jiggery-pokery they could probably fit the additional breakers into the original board! So he put it all back together (12 pm) and left it up to ETSA to come and supply the new meters and reconnect the power.

After much hand-wringing on my part, ETSA eventually came back (5:30 pm). But they pointed out that there was no room to fit any more meters, and they do not have a single meter that supplies three phases of off-peak power. In addition, when trying to reconnect the power ETSA's electrician discovered that the other electrician had broken the fuse holder, so he needed to call the maintenance section to fix that before he could reconnect the power -- a job he would have to come back for! Time: 8:30 pm

So after being without electricity for 12 hours we were finally back at square one, and no closer to having underfloor heating.

A. It takes three electricians, 12 hours. And afterwards you've still got the same meterbox.