Bağlarbaşı, Maltepe

A high number of flats in Maltepe's Bağlarbaşı have had fast, low-budget renovations in recent years, and copper-looking cable with an aluminium core, known as CCA, has frequently been used. Its current carrying capacity is roughly sixty percent of solid copper at the same size, and it cold-creeps in terminals over time, loosening and heating. Living room sockets running hot and face plates deforming is the typical symptom appearing six months after the work.

To identify it, the cable end is cut and the cross-section measured with a micrometer while the conductor colour is checked at the cut face; in CCA cable grey aluminium shows beneath the copper plating and a conductor labelled 2.5 mm² usually measures around 1.8 mm². Branches found to be CCA are not patched but renewed from board to outlet in TSE-certified solid copper from makers such as HES, Öznur or Prysmian. At completion the drum label and batch number are documented to the customer with photographs, proving the material quality.

In Bağlarbaşı, a deformed socket plate, crackling from inside the box or a sharp plastic odour is a definite sign the terminal has begun to melt, and that outlet must be taken out of service immediately. The cause is almost always a loose screw connection: current crossing the contact resistance carbonises the copper, resistance climbs further and the terminal passes 200 degrees, melting the cable insulation. A FLIR thermal sweep finds the point without opening the wall.

The repair cuts blackened conductor ends back to clean copper, replaces the back-box and closes junctions with Wago 221 lever terminals rather than twists or tape. At heavy points such as a kitchen counter, an unbroken TSE-certified 3x2.5 mm² solid copper cable is pulled from the board and each major appliance given its own breaker. All screw connections are tightened with a calibrated screwdriver to between 2.5 and 3.5 Nm; hand tightening leaves an invisible slackness and the fault returns at the same point.

In the older stock of Bağlarbaşı a ceramic screw-in fuse board still sits in the hall cupboard. These boards contain no residual current device at all, so protection against electric shock is zero; the fuse melts and welds into its base under overload, fails to clear a short circuit and the body carbonises over time. The sockets usually have no earth either, with the neutral pin bridged to the earth terminal.

The old board is removed entirely and a flame-retardant modular DIN-rail enclosure installed: an independent Type C breaker per room, dedicated circuits for kitchen and bathroom, and a 30 mA Type A residual current device plus a Type 2 surge arrester at the intake. Flat sub-boards use a minimum 6kA breaking capacity and building intakes 10kA. Where a Bağlarbaşı address has no earth, a solid copper electrode is driven, its resistance measured with a digital earth tester and the socket jumpers removed one by one.