Gallery, Projects and General > Project Logs
New Tractor Shed
DICKEYBIRD:
--- Quote from: awemawson on September 20, 2017, 11:22:02 AM ---....by this time I was knackered so not many pictures.
--- End quote ---
I'm worn out just watching the work you complete in a day! :beer:
awemawson:
Today I intended just to make off the ends of the 50A SWA cable - shouldn't be too hard - little did I know what I was letting myself in for :med:
At the external brick built 'distribution point' the clay from the build up that the shed sits on was VERY sticky, so I cleared away a small working area and put some soft sand down to hopefully make the job less unpleasant. Then - strip out the innards of the 3 phase fuse box (which is a nasty plastic affair) - make provision for an adaptor box below it, as the wall of the plastic fuse board isn't strong enough to take a metal SWA gland , and prepare the SWA cable for making off to the gland. So far so good no big issues.
THREE HOURS later I had managed to get the gland clamp to accept and grip on the wire armour. Even by making it off in free air with the cable straight there was no way the clamp nut was going on far enough to start threading for tightening :bang: I then dismantled the gland, and experimented with bits of the cut off armour wire - even when only a 1/4 turn was engaged of nut on the tapered grippy thing the wire was too fat :bang:
I tried another nut - same issue - so time for the Mad Modder approach: I skimmed about 5 thou off the taper, but as the original was taper knurled I did it in steps to maintain the grip. After that it went on first time, clamped up nice and tight. Then at last I could connect it electrically and transfer to the inside end of the cable which went on with no bother in about 20 minutes flat :thumbup:
awemawson:
While I was doing this Darren arrived and completed the apron shuttering and laying the Aco storm drain
Hanson's concrete lorry arranged for 13:00 / 14:00 tomorrow so we should have an apron :clap:
hermetic:
Funny you should mention swa cable and glands Andrew, I have been doing some 2.5mm and 6.0mm swa recently, and had a real job to get the glands fitted properly, mainly due to the piss poor, only just big enough glands, with huge undercuts at the top of the fixing thread so that the locknuts, which were incredibly badly threaded, and paper thin, screw onto the gland in a wobbly angled fashion, then drop into the undercut and spin freely, meaning you have to find the best locknut you have to secure the gland to the box, and use another two at the top of the thread in the undercut to act as washers! As for getting a good firm grip on the SWA, I know exactly what you mean, they simply will not do it, due to dimensional inaccuracy which goes to the point of believing (possibly correctly) that your supplier has sent the wrong size glands. Perhaps this is why a lot of sparkies are using an extra core as earth, and not trusting the SWA to have good continuity. Did you also notice how hard the plastic insulation was to cut? I could not believe it. I started fitting swa glands about 1970, and have done it on and off ever since, so I know what I am talking about. Recently I fitted a new 3 phase dis board in my own workshop, which involved stripping back the gland and shortening the old (1974) cable. It was a real trip down memory lane, cable easy to strip, insulation soft and pliable, gland fitted perfectly and really got hold of the swa, even the locknuts fit the threads perfectly, and no undercut to lose a locknut or two into. It is not you Andrew, we have to work with rubbish today, makes me really glad I no longer work full time in the industry!
Phil
awemawson:
I started the day terminating the ends of the CAT5E cable that were pulled in yesterday but as I was doing it we got a call to say that the concrete lorry was 10 mins away - several hours early ! Luckily we were ready for him.
Access wasn't too bad and the lorry load ended up pretty much in the middle where needed, and Darren then shuffled it about a bit with the digger to get it in place. The 6 cu Metre proved to be almost enough - just a couple of mixer loads to finish the fill of the shuttering.After a bit of tamping. Darren had hired a long pole steerable float which proved OK'ish if a little light weight but it got the job done. Final finish was a brush attached to the pole float, and then my edging trowel giving a rounded corner.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version