It has begun. My house is now being rewired by yours truly (under careful supervision). The first task was to dig a trench through some concrete with pebbles and flints in it.
At this point, the industrial drill I had borrowed broke. The mechanism that locked the bit in place stopped gripping. I carried on, replacing the bit every time I had to move the drill to a new spot. After a while I developed a technique for moving the drill without lifting it, which greatly reduced the pesky business of constantly picking the bit out of the trench.
The garden path is on the right, the house on the left. After three hours I reached the house.
The wiring regulations say that the steel wire armoured cable must be 500mm below the lowest surface of the ground. Using the trowel I dug down but something odd happened. Earth fell away into a cavity inside the trench. A bit of digging around revealed a pipe. Was this the original metal conduit for the electrical supply to the garage? Certainly the existing cable, suspended from a makeshift catenary, looks much more modern. Being somewhat concerned that the existing shonky wiring might mean that the contents of this pipe (not to mention the pipe itself) was live, I retreated for the time being.
