- May 20, 2009
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- If you're a qualified, trainee, or retired electrician - Which country is it that your work will be / is / was aimed at?
- United Kingdom
- What type of forum member are you?
- Other
I went to a job today and the customer wanted his 4 way board moved 4 inches so that he could make the cupboard smaller to fit a bigger wardrobe, if you ever. I advised the time and material it would take he might as well put the money towards a half decent custom wardrobe with the wooden meter box inside it. I estimated it would take most of the morning till lunch to cable the existing circuits into a small din box then out of that into the old board. Honestly a complete waste of time. He would be gaining a maximum of 2-3 inches. Anyway, that wasn't really what I was thinking about whilst I was looking at it. I was thinking about the certification side of things. If by altering the length of the circuits by 5 more inches or so you are altering every circuits length, which in turn would mean you should bring the installation up to regs, which would have meant a new board providing an rcd etc and then an EIC. I explained this to the customer and he didn't want to know as he rented the flat. He was more interested in getting the biggest wardrobe (flatpacked cheapest) that he could fit in, which are mostly the same dimensions hence the reason for moving the consumer unit. The landlord wont upgrade the consumer unit because in his eyes their is nothing wrong with it. If I was going to extend the cables by using a preferred din box then you should still do an electrical installation certificate because of the alteration in length to every circuit.
