Fried Mice anyone? And Load bearing wall removal :)

So, started removing the load bearing wall and the electrical gubbins.

Original plan was to simply lift the electrical box to above the roof beams and leave it up there for now.
To make a long story short, all meter boxes require to be outside now, you can't get them to come and disconnect the meter to move it as they have to take it outside.

We want the new electrical cable underground, underneath the road, rather than hanging above the road, entering somewhere on the roof as it is now.

So we need to dig the road up and get it put there, but at the same time we want to connect into the sewage network which has finally been signed off and residents can start utilising it.

So to hit two birds with one stone, we want to dig up the road and connect the sewage into the main sewer (3 or 4 m underground) and using the same trench (at 1m depth) for the new electrical cable going to the meter which will be at the front of the property, so the meter reader man no longer needs to come into the premises to read the meter.

Anyhow, all this is still weeks away, and since I don't want to get behind schedule, the fuse box (With  meter) needed to be relocated now, but not outside.

 So, wall broken down, electrical box balancing on the wall.

Other side, with the three phase coming off on the left and the single phase on the right.

 So, to make it all safe, time to remove the master fuses coming into the house, i notice they are FULL of crap, all three phases, and there's a skull on the right... and another skull on the left.. not looking so good...

 Protective plate removed to be greeted by this...  looks like a mousey BBQ took place in there.
Cleaned out as much of the crap as I could safely with the electrical non-conducting screwdriver.
Incommers (Top of the picture) which were still live, looking at them...
Left Phase... looks alright.. Middle phase (Brown wire) burnt to buggery, about 10cm of bare, burnt wire showing. Right phase, burnt to buggery, insulating material torched but still intact, about 3cm bared.

There is no way to switch this off other than turning off the whole street at the transformer... the wooden beam which is above the box appears to be scorched so it has definately been on fire, presumably a mouse bridging the conductor of one of the phases back to the box itself, which is Protective Earth-Neutral bound.

 The death toll after clearing out the fuse box... the fuse box supposedly is only 20 years old or so.

This is the temporary setup before it moves out... the bakelite pannel with the meter has simply been lifted up, placed on some planks and secured to one of the roof beams to keep it upright.

New fusebox bought, 2x single phase with 16A plugs, one for grannies side temporarily and one for me to work with, each fused seperately.

And a 32A 3 phase also fused with its own fuse, which powers random things off single phases throughout grannies side and the workshop.

Simply disconnected all the outcoming from the meter and stuck them into a terminal block, as I didn't want to void the seals on the meter, making sure its all still legal (Despite them making a boo boo as the push switch (Black one) is between the master fusebox and the meter.. and you could disconnect it there to bypass the meter if you ever wanted to...)
All the old wiring is still aluminium right up to the new connector block with 3 phases, neutral and earth now.

Theoretically we're now ready to have the new box moved outside, and we can connect into this small little fusebox for now until the walls are built up so we can install the new master fusebox.

 Anyhow... trying to clean up before taking some pictures and Aron decided he had to keep on barking at the shovel and trying to steal the spade, so here I present: Doggy timeout.
Simply stick him into the wheelbarrow for 2-3 minutes and it calms him right down, as you can see by the expression on his face he doesn't really like it!

 wall taken down all the way to the foundations, far enough to construct the first pillar.

Foundation, old foundation and new foundation! about 2m of wall removed.

The right hand side of this image where you can see the fireplace and the chimney shooting upwards is the section that is to be build up next, then the roof beams can come back down onto the wall and the next section can be done.. but first they need to move the darned electricity main fuse box out of the house and bury the cable under the road and move the meter outside!