AAZ                        An apartment in Lancaster Gate

Lancaster Gate is almost In Paddington but its name has a much higher status than Paddington.  The hotel that I did quite a lot of work was in Lancaster Gate but had kept its original telephone number that suggested it was in W1.  The apartment that I want to report on was on the other side of the road to the Windsor Hotel.  Its history probably went back a long way, to the time that this part of London was very up-market.  As was Notting Hill a hundred years ago, but it is rather more (how shall I put it) "egalitarian" now.

I was called to the apartment as the lady reckoned she was getting a shock off the kitchen tap.  Sparks who do jobbing work, never believe what the customer tells them, they simply listen to the symptoms and then make their own way towards solving the problem.  I half-believed what the lady said and got a good light on my neon screwdriver when I touched the tap with it.  I went round the kitchen and then round the rest of the apartment, turning off everything that wasn't already off.  The tap was still live.  I went the the mains and turned everything off.  The tap was still live.  I was stumped.

I don't know what led me to it but I knocked on the apartment next door.  I suppose the occupant could have told me 'to get lost' but they were very helpful.  I went to the back lower level of the next-door property and found a length of lead-sheathed cable connected to a metal joint-box.  It was in a very dilapidated condition and I found that the lead sheath on the downside of the joint-box was live.  The cable ran ten feet to supply a batten holder.  The concrete wall was running with condensation.  I didn't believe that this was the 'live-tap' cause but as it was an easy job to correct the tatty wiring, I did this.

There was no obvious connection  to the next door apartment so I returned to the original kitchen.  Before leaving the second apartment I told the lady I had tidied up a piece of dangerous wiring and she was pleased.  I told her that I could not see how it related to the live tap next door.  But lo and behold, when I returned to original kitchen, the tap was dead.  I then put two and two together and deduced that the live lead-sheath next door must have made the wall and the floor above alive in apartment number one.  If a crow could fly through concrete, it would have been quite a short distance from the lead sheath to next door's kitchen floor.  Perhaps about three feet

The lady was wrong when she said that the tap was live, it was the floor that was live and she only found this out when she touched the earthed metalwork of the tap.  This just emphasises the principle of a "uniform potential conductor".  You can't get a shock between two identical voltages, no matter how high they are from a third point such as ground!  I got a cup of tea and a modest tip.

I've often wondered what I would have done had the lady next door told me to "get lost".  I would never have found out where the fault was.  I suppose I would have had to call in the local electricity authority.  And no one would have been very happy.