Warning over use of cable reels

The Health and Safety Authority has issued a warning, along with guidelines, about the dangers of using cable reels following an inquest in Limerick into the death of a 14-year-old boy on his grandfather’s farm.

The hearing into the death of Jack Lyons heard he was cleaning, with a friend, the inside of a cow shed with brushes when he decided to get a power hose.

While using the power hose, he received a fatal electric shock while holding the metal barrel of the hose.

David Boland, an inspector with the HSA, said the boy had plugged in a flex to use the power hose.

The flex was 100m in length wrapped around a cardboard wheel. About 15m of the flex was unwrapped.

Mr Boland said the hose was for heavy power usage and the cable was not strong enough for the power going through the flex.

As a result, the flex overloaded and it generated excessive heat which melted the plastic insulation around the inner core wiring of the flex. This, he said, resulted in a crossover of the live wire to the earth wire and everything attached to the earth wire became live.

Mr Boland said there was no residual current device (RCD) on the socket circuit onto which the power hose was plugged. He said the RCD trips a system very quickly and would more than likely have prevented the accident.

The HSA said overloading can result due to a cable reel being coiled up while powering equipment.

“When power flows through an electrical cable, some heat is always generated in the cable. This heat generally dissipates into the air. If the reel is left coiled during use, the heat generated in the cable may not dissipate and can start to build up.

“This in turn can melt the outer insulation of the cable and the insulation on the cores, leading to earth cores and neutral cores becoming electrically live.

“In this situation a very serious risk of electrocution arises for anyone using an appliance fed through the reel or indeed for anyone touching any piece of metal in the vicinity.”

RCDs are generally located in the electrical distribution board and should be tested at least twice a year.