Client Call for Fan Repair and Electrical Works
Hi, you’re listening to John Dale from GlobileNet. I had a call from one of our clients called Bill. Bill had a problem. He was a new customer, actually. He had a problem, and he needed a fan fixed in the shower recess, and he wanted some other little electrical works done around the house. So I arranged a site visit. We don’t charge for our visits and quotes.
No Access to Bathroom Exhaust Fan
When I went there, there was no access whatsoever to the fan that was in a bathroom recess, in a shower recess. In inspection and doing some measurements, and we did have the good luck of having downlights in the shower recess, which allowed us to put a camera up and have a look at what was going on.
Rain Shower Head Access for Fan Removal
What we found was by doing some measurements and taking some pictures of the old fan, that we could actually create enough space to pull the old fan out through the shower, rain shower head. The rain shower head is a device or shower head that sits on the ceiling and it’s about 300mm by 300mm. Not that we’re familiar with the plumbing works of a shower unit like that, but we believe that we could be able to cut out a little bit more of the gyprock behind that without making and leaving any residual scars.
Faulty Stairway LED Lighting Section
The second task that Bill wanted was to repair a stairway LED section. He had one section of 17 stairway LEDs that was failing. He asked us “could we replace it?” So the first thing with those steps, the problem that was identified was that we don’t know how many Watts per metre it is. We’re not quite sure the supplier name, and it’s not easy to find.
LED Colour Temperature and Quote Assessment
So in our quotes, we don’t usually start to do work, which is what would be required. We have to make an educated guess based on what we see. And often I can tell the colour tones of the LEDs or the temperature as we know it normally.
Kitchen Cupboard Benchtop Light Stuck On
The third expression of interest was for a problem that occurred with the cupboard or the benchtop lights being left on all the time. When we’re quote, as I say, we don’t touch anything, particularly unless we have to. But we have to make an educated guess as to what the problem could be. In this case, I figured it would be, well, it was possibly the LED strip or the actual light switch. What was happening here was that the light was permanently on, so it was more likely to be a switch problem. So we arrange for the quote so that we change the switch.
Electrical Quote and Risk Assessment
But after doing that on-site evaluation, then we put together a quote and covered the risks that we felt that we had, in particular for the shower and for the stairway, because we don’t know with the stairway LEDs, whether they’re 12 volts or 24 volt style LEDs. And we provided the quote, asked Bill for some feedback just to make sure that we’d covered all the items that he wanted to cover. And sure enough, and he said, well, that was rather expensive, but he realised it was a bit tricky.
Plumbing and Electrical Overlap in Fan Repair
In a job like this, we do go out on a limb sometimes It’s because it’s slightly plumb-ish. You got to be a bit of a plumber to understand what has got to happen in order to drop this rain shower head. I don’t know them intimately. So when we came to do the job, we reviewed the job with the customer, make sure we know what we’re up against, and get to agree with the scope it works against.
Removing Shower Fascia and Accessing Screws
And the first job was the bath shower, the shower head. And working out how to take a shower head, if you haven’t done it before, can take a little while. I mean, these things, they seem obvious, right? So you put a screwdriver to unclip what you think is a manner of unclipping. Sometimes it happens straight away, and sometimes it takes quite a while, like on this occasion, because the clipping mechanism was so fastidious, it was tough, and you’re not sure if you’re doing it the right way. You have to have a lot of faith and confidence and really go for it. With that confidence, we managed to release the clips on the fascia of the shower so that we could see the screws behind it.
Unscrewing Shower Assembly for Electrical Access
When we saw the screws behind it, we had to unscrew the whole plastic assembly that comes with the pipe that comes off of the ceiling for the shower. Then we have to undo the nut that tightens the pipe onto the shower head and remove that.
Gyprock Cutout for Exhaust Fan Replacement
And now we’re ready and we’ve got access to the gyprock behind. And we identify and mark and cut the 250mm that we need. And we need to be quite careful because we don’t want to lose the gyprock around the fixing holes. Otherwise, we’re going to end up with a big problem.
Exhaust Fan Testing and Fault Identification
By cutting carefully, cutting those sections out and rounding them off, we now have access to the fan. We do a few tests because we don’t know if it’s a fan necessarily, or if it’s not plugged into the fan properly, or indeed, whether it’s a switch.
Fan Replacement and Successful Installation
So the first item was the switch, actually, which we already tested. Now it was the fan and we checked the plug to make sure the plug was good. And it was indeed. So now we removed the fan. And because we identified the fan during a pre-quote inspection, we had the right fan with us, which after taking out the old one and managing to squeeze it through a hole, squeezing the new one up to the hole, re-taping it, securing it onto the timbers in the ceiling and testing it. It worked beautifully. Then the reassembly of the shower head and subsequently testing to make sure everything was drip free and the fan was working.
Electrical Versatility Beyond Plumbing
So that job could have done with a plumber, probably. But as I said, when we check these things, we feel like we’ve got certain competencies, and we did manage to do that with those competencies.
Testing LED Stairway Strip Lights
Then we went on to the LED steps. Now, each of these steps was about a metre and a half wide. The failing step, we pulled the lead strip out of its recessed position. When we pulled it out, we checked for the voltage on the end of the LED strip. Unfortunately, in this case, it wasn’t an LED strip problem. There was a fault in that there was no voltage present on the LED strip, so the LED strip was probably okay. Indeed, we disconnected the LED strip and put it on to our 12 volt supply just in the kitchen on a plug and found that it was working fine.
Searching for Hidden LED Drivers
Unfortunately, the customer had no idea in this two-story home where the drivers for the LED strips, the drivers are little black boxes that convert from 240 volts to 24 volts in this case. And so we went up into the ceiling and had a look to try to find the set of drivers that were driving this stairway. We went into the garage, we went to the switchboard, we went behind the switches of the two-way light switches on the upstairs and downstairs section of this wall, and we could not find an LED driver.
LED Cabling Workaround and Repair
The only option I had was either to say “Well, look, I can’t help you”, or when I had a look at it, I could see that one section had more like a 2 to 2.5 metre lead strip going around the bottom of the stairs. And I suggested to the client that we could wrap around the stairs from the existing lead, which we’d taken out, and tie onto the step below LED and extend that power that was going to that one to the original lead strip that we were fixing, to which he agreed. We approached that.
Concealing Stairway Cabling and Finishing Job
It did mean that we had a little bit of cable being somewhat exposed on the outside of the stairway, but he had a black balustrade which sufficiently hid it. We put a grey tape which was very similar to the grey tiles over the little red and black wires that went between the steps. Anyway, the job was done and fixed. It worked very well.
Complex Kitchen Light Switch Replacement
Then we moved on to the switch downstairs in the kitchen, where just taking the switch off, we found that there were many, many wires, a very difficult switch to take off and put on because the, well, careless, I would call it, wiring and the accumulation of wires and the lack of space behind the switch.
Identifying Fault and Final Switch Repair
However, we did manage to find the problem. We did have to change the switch anyway. And after changing the switch, did our test, put the switch back on the wall, and that was all done. And Bill was very happy.
Five-Star Review for GlobileNet Electrical Works
Bill has done us a review. This story is just to tell you about the versatility that one needs. You either get somebody that says, no, thank you, or somebody that’s willing to take a risk and say, yes, I’ll do that because I feel like we’ve got the competencies. And that’s what you’ll get from GlobileNet. The result was a very happy client that was willing to give us a five-star review. And I’ve given you the story in this entirety, probably too much. Thanks. Bye.
