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DARREN FIELDS: WE HAD TO GET A PICTURE AFTER DISCOVERING A NEW INVISIBLE GLAND ON A SWA, RECENTLY INSTALLED ON A BRAND NEW INSTALLATION IN BRISTOL.
Thereβs no excuse for either poor workmanship or a lack of competence, and this submission proves that.
The opening in the enclosure for this SWA cable appears to have been made too large for the gland that fits the cable; that said, the next size up probably would have done the job, so it was either unavailable, or the installer may have chosen not to bother, for some reason.
The gland performs many jobs, not just to anchor the cable securely but also to provide a connection to cpc or the main earth terminal (MET) or to terminate into an enclosure in a similar manner to a conduit or MICC cable. It also stops undue strain on the terminations from the weight of the cable.
There may be a lack of competence or understanding on the part of the installer, but to be fair, there is a correctly fitted and glanded cable to the right that would suffice as an instruction of how to fit one, or at least what it should look like!
There is also a significant amount of swarf from the hole saw that produced the opening, which should have been removed, as this kind of swarf contamination can cause faults and issues later if they come into contact with any terminations.
On top of this, it is pretty clear that the armour of the cable has not been connected to the cpc; whether this was done on purpose to isolate the armouring for some reason is not known, so rather than code against it for non-connection to the cpc, I feel an FI would be a better call here.
Overall this is a pretty poor show of technique, competence and work ethic.
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