Stolen Fuse at 98 Rope Street

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Sometime during the day on Wednesday 5th somebody with access to the communal hallway removed the fuse for my flat from the communal fuse cupboard. So, late in the evening, I returned to a flat with no power and a defrosted freezer.

As I had no idea we had a communal fuse box that takes a single electricity feed from the street and then splits this to the individual flats I called the EDF emergency number to rectify the problem. EDF were very good and sent 2 engineers out who arrived at 4am. They identified the problem and due to the location of the fuse box deduced that the fuse must have been stolen by somebody in the block, most likely to replace their own fuse that may have blown.

I am still awaiting the bill for this call-out but was told it will be approximately £150.

So can I please ask that if your fuse does blow that you go to the local hardware shop and spend the couple of pounds to buy a new one, just taking somebody else’s has cost me about £200 (EDF charge and a freeze full of ruin food), a lost night of sleep and a couple of hours work.

Regards

Paul

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Paul, I am very perplexed by this post.  

I recently did a drain test of the emergency lights about the development. To do this I had to switch off the lights on the communal distribution board. We do not have fuses, we have RCD switches and these are linked to the door alarm, the lights, the tv amp and the stairwell sockets.  Also these do not just pull out.  If there was a communal fuse and it had been removed, all of the flats would have had the same problem.  There would have been 10 defrosted freezers and no power to any of the flats in block 98.

If this was indeed the case then I will look into this matter further for you.

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Thanks for this, I'm just going by what the EDF engineer reported back to me and it took them all of 2 minutes to fix, however I was in my flat testing the power while the engineer was doing his bit in the downstairs hallway.

Their explanation did seem to make sense to me as there wasn't any power to my meter either (no digital display) but there was to the other two on my floor, so it appears to be something after the power coming into the building and being split to the individual flat. It did only affected my flat as the communal lights were still working.

When the bill comes in I'll ask for a detailed report which might shed more light on it (sorry for the pun) as I find it hard to believe somebody at Rainbow Quay would intentionally do something like that.

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