Drilled through cable!!

[ThunderMum]

My husband has drilled through a cable!! He’s pretty good at DIY, very slim error margin, so naturally he is completely beating himself up about this and has NO IDEA what to do. Especially seeing as it is Sunday night!

Anyone have any experience of this?

Will our insurance cover it? The wording seems to suggest that when you deliberately cause damage it won’t (which isn’t really surprising) so he seems reluctant to let me call them.

Do we need to turn the electrics off tonight until we can get a sparky in? I’m not a massive fan of that because it’s in the kitchen and I don’t want the fridge disconnected. But obviously replacing all of our food is preferable to the house burning down so I will do if it seems necessary.

Thanks in advance!!

(PS I asked him if I should put it to mumsnet and he said “no, they’ll just all take the piss!” so fingers crossed you are all kind.)

Does your house insurance include home emergency cover? Check your policy documents. If it does, that will probably cover it. Can't offer any advice re whether you need to turn the electric off. Presume it blew a fuse?

Can you phone an electrician to come out in the morning and ask their advice on what to do overnight?

You can probably just turn off the part of the house that the wire is part of from your fuse box for now and get help tomorrow. He's lucky he didn't get hurt!

Has it tripped anything on the Consumer unit?

Yes blew a fuse, and yes home emergency. I think it’s worth calling so may just get on with it whether he is in agreement or not.

He has a couple of distant friends who are electricians but he doesn’t want to bother them on a Sunday night. (Think he’s embarrassed too!)

May have to call someone... gotta be worth it for peace of mind!

when it happened to us (dh drilled through both a water pipe and an electrical cable) the insurance (home emergency cover) sent a plumber and electrician very quickly,
our premiums were not affected at all.

Turn the electric off to that part if you know what the wire feeds.

We did this recently and rang my (qualified electrician) father. We chiseled out a small section of wall, cut the wire, put in a an electrical chocolate box from b&q, filled the hole with a small square of plasterboard and skimmed over.

2 hour max job and less than £20. Was a wire to a plug socket. If a more may n wire it wouldn't have been possible to do that.

Ring the home emergency number. They may well send someone out tonight. We had a plumber out late on a Sunday night via ours. And they sent another when my OH screwed down a squeaky floorboard and went thru a pipe. No suggestion that they wouldn't cover it just because it was his fault.

DH dug through the Virgin Media cable. No telly, no phone, no internet. I made him phone them and admit to it. It was free to get it fixed but he did have to put up with them laughing at him

If the fuse is blown and there's no RCD to trip (I take it's an older consumer unit with fuses rather than mcb's and no RCD) it should be ok to leave the rest of the electrics live until the problem gets fixed.
If it's the kitchen and the fridge is off, can you run an extension cable from another circuit to power the fridge?

Unfortunately the fix is to replace the damaged cable, which will probably involve digging out at least part of the wall. Is the wall solid (brick or breeze block) or a stud wall? If you're really lucky the cable will be in a channel and it will pull through with no effort, or a new cable can bu run leaving the damaged one in situ, but the chances are a bit slim.

My husband put a screw through a central heating pipe in bedroom 1. A year later did the same in bedroom 2. This year he was using a circular saw to get 2 floorboards up, yes you'd guessed it, straight through 2 pipes. He fixed them himself. I'm just pleased we've finished upstairs. Down stairs has solid floors and all pipes are on the walls.

Sounds dead right, what matters is whether the wire was a spur from a plug or part of the ring main, although basically the repair is the same. cut out plasterboard, find break, (make sure fuse is pulled before doing any of this) mend it with a chocblock, wrap insulation all over it if you can, then replaster over it. A pro won't do much else except charge like shit to do it!

Gah, happened to me. I was chiselling out an area in the cement floor to lower the bath trap and suddenly there was a massive bang and sparks flew. I could hear a hissing sound and while usually quite laidback, I was terrified. I actually thought I had hit a gas pipe. Called emergency gas services who came out in minutes who much to my relief told me that it was actually an electric cable, which should never been set in the floor. It led to an extension and meant after switching off that electrical circuit, the plugs in the last room did not work. I carefully chiselled out the damaged cable and used a secure connection box, then covered it with waterproofed cement. I normally a stud, pipe and cable detector but really didn’t think of cowboy builders putting a cable in the floor underneath a bath tub. This was before I had DC but remember herding my dogs outside in the garden, lest there was a gas explosion. In the wall, it should be even easier to fix though.

Good news! All fixed! Thanks for your advice all, we used a chocolate box as suggested. Hard walled the hole so just need to plaster over it. Luckily the house is still in one piece ☺️

The gas board did the same thus morning taking our estate off power until tonight.
Tell him his is no big deal 😂

Yay, well done OP!