Polite words of warning

Simon & Nicky

Bronze
Feb 3, 2004
655
14
0
www.simon-hall.co.uk
'Tis the season to be jolly so I'm not going to sound off for hours but..... I bought an extension lead in Playero supermarket Sosua. It was pretty substantial looking with moulded plugs on either end - orange in colour. I bought it to run the iron which typically came with a one foot long flex! It worked for about a day and then stopped working. I thought this a bit strange but kept the lead anyway because I thought I might find a use for the flex for something else one day.

Christmas Decoration day - in fact. The usual handfull of wires, bulbs, plugs and so forth; of course none of them working, or they needed to go miles away from the nearest plug etc. Finally, I thought, a chance to use that old external orange flex that I had kept. I chopped the plug off one end and discovered pretty quickly the reason why it had stopped working. It is supposed to be three core cable and looks pretty much up to the job but a stanley knife through it immediately revealed that the cables are in fact about as robust (and as thick) as telephone wire. They had melted!

So, before any of you burn your house down with some dodgy Christmas wiring, please test to see if the cable is up to the job or remember to switch the lights off if you go out.

- You know it makes sense ;)

Simon
 

Lambada

Gold
Mar 4, 2004
9,478
410
0
80
www.ginniebedggood.com
Crumbs! I think you'd better call the new addition 'Sparky'! Actually it isn't just extension cables. We rewired the very first house we ever bought here - a WOODEN 100 year old gingerbread house in centre of Puerto Plata. Discovered the electrical wiring which 'supported' ceiling fan in main bedroom was in fact telephone wire. Previous owner had been in blissful ignorance.
 

Keith R

"Believe it!"
Jan 1, 2002
2,984
36
48
www.temasactuales.com
Ah, such memories! When we first moved into our house in a "nice" neighborhood in SD in 1995, I was dismayed to find that the prior owner had run off with every electrical receptacle, every light fixture in the place. Didn't help to be told this was not uncommon in the DR (where I'm from, such things automatically "convey" unless specified otherwise in the sales agreement).

We did not yet know a reliable (I use this word on purpose) electrician in the DR, and I had done many minor electrical jobs around the house (put in plugs, light fixtures, ceiling fans) back in Virginia, so my first reaction was to say I'd take care of it. First thing I did was check the various holes to see what kind of wire I was dealing with, whether it was grounded, and what the fusebox looked like. What I found horrified me. A fusebox that not only did not have fuses, but had been dangerously jury-rigged. When I queried the former owner, he matter-of-factly replied that the d*mn thing blew so many fuses, he just decided to dispense with them... :confused:

Then when I examined the wires for the former wall sockets and ceiling light fixtures, I discovered that (1) nothing was grounded; (2) the wires for each end-point were a different color, so the only way to tell which one was the live one and which the ground was test each and every one. [Difficult to do during so many blackouts.] I soon found out that where red might indicate "live" on one end-point, it was "ground" on another in the same room. :confused: :confused: :confused:

I decided that there was no way I was going to try to make sense of all this -- I would likely get fried. We needed an electrician. Luckily in joking about all this to the guy running the nearby colmado, whom I had befriended, he gave me the name and number of the electrician they used, Miguel, who also routinely worked at a large hotel, so clearly was considered reliable.

Miguel eventually managed to straighten all this out, but even he was shaking his head at the wiring.

Miguel took me with him to the hardware store to pay for the supplies he needed for my house (plugs, light fixtures, fans, fuses, some replacement wire), and I was dismayed at the poor quality of much of the hardware.

At the time some Dominicans suggested to me that this state of affairs -- the poor wiring and lots of low standard electrical supplies --- was because so many live in concrete houses, which do not burn (but furniture & appliances inside do!), the lack of code & home inspections, and traditionally (until recent years) household draw on electrical systems simply wasn't so big. Whether this is true, or whether alot of it is simply lack of standards among electricians, I'm not sure. But I think continuing with such a lackadaisical attitude about electrical safety is crazy in a country where electrical surges are daily occurences...
 

Spirit7

New member
Aug 26, 2004
150
2
0
So that's why...

...a couple of these thick, 50ft. extensions which look so sturdy turned out to be so deficient. I use them mainly to run the edge trimmer in the country cabin's yard and have already lost a couple of these extensions since they were always getting hot and burned, eventually. In fact, sometimes my water pump would not go and I thought it was bad and it was really that I was plugging it into one of these extensions.
 

Hillbilly

Moderator
Jan 1, 2002
18,948
514
113
A few days ago

Someone was really b!tching that an extension cord was like RD$1500 at Hach? and only RD$300 at Playero. I think we know why now....

Lighting and electricity are a joke in most homes.

I am willing to bet that more than 90 of the homes in country have deficient wiring. He!!. I know mine does!!

HB :D:D