AIBU to think it isn't usual for houses to share TV aerials

[PoisonedPriestess]

I've lived in my house for a year now and I don't have TV (I'm one of those hippies that doesn't even watch catch up!).

Yesterday I was rooting around in my cellar doing some tidying when I noticed a switch I'd never seen before. Looked a bit like a normal electric switch and it was on. Assuming that I could turn it back on if I noticed anything without power I turned it off in case it was using electricty and continued tidying.
About 10 minutes later I had a knock on the door and found my next door neighbour there. He politely asked whether I'd done something to the TV aerial as about 10 minutes previously his TV had stopped working. I told him about the switch in the cellar and he said "that'll be it then, could you pop it back on?"

To keep the peace while I thought about it I went and switched the switch back on but it seems awfully bizarre to me. I'm a rural lass at heart - is this a normal thing in cities? Is it costing me? I'm struggling to find much about it on the interwebs.

Oops only just seen the rest of this conversation, sorry.

Cable has been painted white (may have originally been a beige colour?) and fairly thick and slightly flattened. A cross section would look somewhat lozenge shaped I imagine, whether through age or design I do not know.

I'm pretty sure there's an ordinary explanation but I really am going to leave it until DH gets home to do any more with.

You say thick and flattened - is it thicker than say a standard kettle cable? As a very basic rule of thumb bigger cable = more electricity.

When you turned it off before, did it definitely not turn off anything else in your house?

I think you said the cable ran up from your cellar - can you go to the room above and see if.you can trace it, or does it go out through cellar wall?

Have you RTT, 665 - erm yes..struggling to see what "we have established already" that I asked about though? where is the we tested it and its a live cable post ?
helpful

Whatever it is he is using electricity that you pay for. Switch it off again when he is home and let him come round so you can discuss it!

Just shown this to DH (trained as an electrician in the 1970's ) and he says that although as the pp said the electric suppliers put one supply in to a pair of semies, this is not a big enough switch for a mains supply, the cable sounds too small and finally there would not be a switch/power cut off for next door in your house. He also said it doesn't look like anything to do with a tv.
Something dodgy, he says.

What does your DH think OP ?

Do you live next door to two weird blokes called Richie and Eddie?

If so, check your gas too.

Did your DH get it sorted OP?

Weird
I would be tempted to get an electrician in to determine what it actually is for

It sounds quite dodgy. I would turn it off and tell your neighbour to bugger off.

Any updates?

That switch reminds me of when I was growing up in the 70s so it's very old.

Regardless of whether it's using power it's daft that a switch in your house controls NDN's TV. Time to get the aerial engineers or electricians in to sort it out so he's in control of his own tv in future.

Side note. We had a switch by our back door that we never found out what it controlled. Baffled the electrician too.

In my old flat (one of 3 in a old house conversion), we discovered a similar mysterious switch and plug point. It turned out that this had nothing to do with our supply ( checked by flicking our main board off). It was connected from our downstairs neighbour's flat ( probably a botch job when the house was originally converted -we could also see a cable running down through the floorboard!). Who knows if previous occupants of the flat were using this 'free' electricity but my conscience told me to call an electrician to disable it. There were also other cocked up plug points in the garages attached to the house too- one garage belonging to a downstairs neighbour had an electric point which was supplied by the top flat ( they had a switch too!)

I would definitely get an electrician in to investigate exactly where your mysterious switch is supplying electricity to!

In some areas you do not get a clear signal from the main transmitter and you might use a sub transmitter, or a weaker signal. In those cases you have a booster fitted (which DOES run off the mains) and supplies power to a booster via the aerial to a small device fitted to the actual aerial. If you switch the power off it will disrupt the signal. Why would this be fitted in your house and supplied to your neighbour - no idea unless you get really poor reception and it was the only solution or the houses shared the cost and fitted one. Since the switch to digital a lot of main transmitters switched to a higher output and reception improved in a lot of areas, that many could now use the main transmitter. The other option is this is a powered splitter, and could be splitting the aerial between both houses (that is also powered off the mains).

Yeah he's definitely using your electricity to power some sort of booster or powered aerial.

The only time I've known shared aerials is in houses that have been converted to flats and student accommodation.

I'm intrigued! And also slightly astonished that I'm so intrigued!

OP, did this get resolved? So curious!

Hmm, well I'd wait for your DH OP, then you can both go round to your neighbours and ask him to explain the history of the switch/antenna thing. You can be friendly about it, it's perfectly reasonable to want to know the details and your neighbour is in a position of needing to be nice to you about it because you control the switch! He'll either explain things and show you how it all works and you'll either believe him or not and then take it from there. One thing that I would personally be concerned about is the state of the wiring connected to this mysterious switch, but then I'm a worrier about house fires... :( Perhaps have an electrician in to check it out?

Photograph the box in your cellar.

Do a reverse search on the image in Google. This will identify what it is. You can search from: images.google.co.uk/
(Upload or browse to the photo)

Once your husband comes home, you can ask him if it is costing you anything to host or run the box. Even if it is not, I would think about removing it. Not a feature I would want to have in my home as a future homebuyer.