Had to take over a job from someone else the other day, didn't want to but the client gives us tonnes of work and this was his own house. The other spark is no longer on the scene and I've already been to one of his jobs that had an earth fault so he just disconnected the cpc's out of the circuit to get over it.
So my first port of call was the consumer unit - BG dual RCD, 2 circuits connected down ring and up ring, sockets 2nd fixed and live and some lights 2nd fixed but not powered yet. First test was see if they were rings, neither were. After a bit of investigating, found this in the utility.
Thats why that circuits not a ring then, live ends. Onto the upstairs sockets and quickly found this.
That was after my temp fix, was the same as the utility before I touched it. 3rd cable was a spur to a socket on the floor below that wasn't working.
I also found this that was live. Not touched anything, that's how I came across it.
So apart from the various death traps the place also looked like this.
not unique to this job but why do so many sparks have to cut and patch so much plaster work after its all been done, apparently he forgot to fit loads of stuff that the client had asked for.