Power Struggle
Posted: Mon 10 December, 2007 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, House Work 6 Comments »On Saturday one of our bell-end neighbours decided to cut down one of his trees. In the process, the tree fell in the wrong direction, right into the overhead power lines. Rather than pulling them right down, though, it knocked one loose, which then swung round in the wind and kept on connecting with the other overhead lines, making for a very pretty firework display, and some very dodgy power. Of course, we just turned everything off at the main fuse-board, but it really put the mockers on the plans we’d had for the weekend. (of which more later)
As it turned out, we ended up calling the fire brigade, as the overhead lines were sparking badly, and directly over everyone’s oil tanks – as well as the sparks and arcing happening all the way out to the main road. We’d also called the electricity people at the same time, and generally dealt with everything about it – the bell-end neighbour was worse than useless about the entire thing.
The electricity people took a good three hours to turn up (Tossers) which left the fire brigade and police very pissed-off, but there we go. That’s something for them to deal with. In the end, the power was completely out from 11.30am through ’til 9.30pm. We went out in the end, did a bundle of shopping and so on, so it wasn’t a complete loss of a day, but it was still a complete pain in the arse.
What did amuse us, however, was that once the power was all back on, one of the electricity guys came round to check all was well. We had a chat about the events of the day, and it turns out that bell-end neighbour is in for a right shock- (pardon the pun) because it was his own fault, it’s likely that he’s going to get charged for:
- All the time the electricity people were on site (about seven hours, all told, on weekend rates)
- The cost of the new lines they’ve had to put up
and - The cost of them coming out again to replace all the insulators and gubbins that’re now all scorched and in need of replacement because of the events of the weekend
So in short, he’s going to end up with a bill for a good few thousand pounds, when he could’ve spent £100 and had a tree-surgeon do the work safely.
Ouch.
Ouch indeed. He might be insured though. Hopefully for him…
And I think you’ll find a properly qualified and insured tree surgeon will cost a great deal more than £100. More like £750 if it was a full-size tree.
Also, a generator might be a good idea, if your power supply is anywhere near as unreliable as ours. You can pick up a small one for about £60-£70 these days, if you look in the right places.
The power supply around us isn’t too bad, to be honest – well, unless bell-end neighbours sod about. But we do have a UPS so we can shut down the PC safely etc., rather than it just dumping out.
As for tree surgeon, the one we use cost us £300 for the day when he came round to trim the stuff in our garden, and that was a full day’s work.
Did you have to pay in cash? 😉
I laughed.
I got a load of trees chopped down last year by a tree surgeon including a couple growing *through* a powerline. He charged me a couple of hundred and chopped up the felled trees into handy fit-in-my-tiny-stove size.