circuit design

[pablod]

hi,

apart from needing your 17th edition and having the knowledge is there any other qualifications needed to do design work. i.e electrical plans on a house extension. only talking domestic. a friend has asked be to do the design work on the plans for his house extension. once my elesca assessment comes through i knows i can rewire a house from stratch and test. is doing the designs on a house different if you are not carrying out the work. to me it seems the same its just i wont carry out the work.

p.s i now know why so many electricians pull the main fuse cause the DNO are useless. i should be fully passed by now only if they didnt send a meter reader round instead of an engineer to fit my isolator lol. trying to do things the right way seems very difficult

 

[malcolmsanford]

Quite a difficult question really as often you will not get a domestic rewire that will have a set of drawings, unless it is an estate type project carried out by say a local authority and then you would have architect plans and then design plans.

I'm assuming that the LABC have asked to look at a set of plans/drawings for this extension as part of their planning application. Most times if I were asked this I would design up a simple schematic drawing showing appliance positions and heights, the appliance symbols and and a single connection line between each appliance that indicates cable.

I then would have a key and legend box with key for the symbols and legend for the circuit, similar to a SOTR grid and do it all on cad. If you don't have cad then you can do quite an acceptable one on Visio.

 

[pablod]

hi thanks for the reply,

i would of thought they would need to see if the consumer unit was up to the job too. was also wondering if they want to know volt drop and zs figures. i guess it depends if the electrician doing it would just work off the plans. i found some cable calc software too but it dont seem to work out the rating factors correctly. is there software you use or is it best to just do it the old fashion way with pen and paper. would like to be a bit more up to date with things and store on a pc.

cheers

 

[Rockingit]

You might want to remember that when it comes to doing the certificates, you'll need to do the full 3 signature one and you sign for design whilst another person is signing for installation and/or testing.

If you're wantng to count projects as being inspectable for getting your first registration then it's probably best to undertake the whole thing, not just design.