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sparkyork

evening all, having been self employed now for about 4 months ish, im finding many jobs that are not up to scratch bonding wise etc
tt system today with Ra of 543 ohms, luckily all these jobs i have been allowed by the customer to bring upto standard.

im finding it hard to explain things to customers they just look at you daft and im sure i can see that they just think were after more money!!

like trying to explain to job today, cheif constable of police from somewhere about why his high Ra reading and lack of main equipotential bonding as well as no 30ma rcd protection contributing to high touch voltage level which didnt allow my tester to do an rcd test.

anyone got anylinks to some downloads? think it would be good to just give em a pre printed leaflet rather than trying to explain everything all the time! sure i heard someone on here that had an earthing and bonding leaflet as welll
 
I think a bonding leaflet could be useful to customers as it is very easy to confuse them (bull**** baffles brains and all that). However, I simply state that I am prohibited from carrying out certain works until fundamental safety measures on their electrical installation are brought up to date in accordance with BS7671 17th edition. Usually does the trick.
 
nice statement that, however theyll then ask "what certain works" do you need to update, then you gotta get into bonding explanations and all the rest of it.

and to be honest i think i end up confusing me self trying to explain it to them, it took me years to get to a point where you can grasp why things need to be done a certain way etc, and im expecting a customer to get upto speed on the earthing and bonding requirements, aswell as electrodes, touch voltage and all the rest of it! could even give them a certificate after the chat then they could go out and do there own work! lol!
 
no paul i aint checked it will have a butchers, cant log on it as domestic installer yet till i get me activation code or something.
 
yes i know that takes a while to arrive,but you can get the downloads from the normal homepage as it is there for all including joe public
 
I do wonder if it's possible to give the punters too much information.

A mate of mine has a habit of going into the why's and wherefor'es of the regulations, and you can see the customer glaze over. I'm sure they gain no information from this in depth explanation. OK, some people can understand what we mean, and I would personally give them more information, but in general I try to work out how much people can absorb, and tailor what I say to that level. Sometimes it's a discussion, but more often than not I end up stating that *whatever* doesn't meet the current regulations with a very brief reasoning behind why the regulation is there, and what needs to be done. In most cases this works OK.

I'm not sure that handing out leaflets that explain the regs will work that well - especially if they are aimed at electricians and not end users. With Plod, I would probably not tried to explain why the meter wouldnt read - a hard enough job amongst ourselves, and I'm not entirely sure I understand it completely! I would have gone down the route of stating that he had an earth reading that was very poor, explained that it needs to be rectified from the safety point of view and given him the info on what is required to make it safe.

Yes, it's not usually what they want to hear, but once you have given them the bad news, follow up with a good deal for them in the hope they will go ahead.
 

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