How do you know if your neighbors are stealing your electricity?

Somehow a client calls me and asks me to check if his neighbors are stealing electricity from him. To be honest, I have never had such orders.

I come and listen to a long story about the mutual "love" of all the inhabitants of this floor. I realized that I was at the very epicenter of the "neighborly wars". I haven't started working yet, but I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Moreover, the “good” neighbors came out and began to interrogate me: “Who are you? By what right? Do you even have a license?"

The last question I was least ready to answer. Nevertheless, he set to work.

In this case, it would be necessary to work quietly, without noise - so as not to frighten off likely thieves. But the customers themselves staged a noise on the entire entrance. If the neighbors were stealing, then at the time of my check, they certainly turned off their devices from my customers.

I checked the floor shield - everything is rank by rank. Don't dig. But the hostess warned that the neighbor once worked as an electrician. So, if they steal, then very carefully. In addition to the shield - other options for tie-in neighbors did not come to mind. I was about to leave, but I remembered an interesting fact.

I changed the wiring in an apartment with the same layout, but in a neighboring house. So, there the introductory junction box was in the same through hole in the concrete wall with the neighboring box. This was not visible, even when opening the lid of the box.

I changed all the wiring, so I removed the old boxes, sockets, switches. After removing the box from the niche, I saw the back wall of the neighbors' junction box. And what an audibility! The owners of that apartment then confirmed that the neighbors were always well heard in the corridor.

So here I decided to check this box. I take off the cover, take the wires to the side and see that the bottom of the box is broken, and insulation is removed from two wires (phase and zero) - by a centimeter. The wires do not go to the neighbor, but in the cleaned places it is clear that they were connected to them (traces of scale, scratches). The bottom of the neighbor's box was also broken. I didn't catch it red-handed, of course.

Apparently, while the tenants were arguing, the neighbor carefully removed the "crocodiles" from these wires.

The hostess recommended not to make a scandal today. Wait until he pounces again and call the RES officers with the district police officer - so that everything is in accordance with the law. When I left, I spoke loudly with the hostess - so that the neighbors could hear that I had not found anything.

How it ended, I don't know. Nobody else called me. But I'm guessing like this:

In general, there is a simpler way:

“Turn off all the appliances from the outlets, turn off the lights, turn everything off. Look at the counter. If the counter is disk, the disk should not spin at all. If electronic, the load light should not blink (the greater the load, the more often it blinks).