Welcome Iain ,
practice makes perfect
(Working on dead equipment is preferred -
especially if your only light source fails,getting "hands on experience")
Hey static zap,
Thanks for the advice there.
This is the main part of my learning curve, I'm not using the best terminology. I should have said mains powered equipment, rarely is it ever live powered when I am involved with it.
The only live works I really tend to do is working on opened up power supply units and checking the low-voltage lines with a meter.
What did your 20 years experience give you in the skill set range? what qualifications do you currently hold, as your profile is unavailable at present.
I have quite a bit of hands on experience but very little theory, coming from no formal training what so ever.
I started to investigate circuit design pretty young, age 8 or so, working initially with only low voltage stuff but came across some old books one of which in particular interested me. I cannot recall the name of it or locate an obvious image of the cover online right now but I'll see if I can dig this out. Unfortunately the actual book was lost in a house fire a few years back (non electrical, lol).
These were not modern books, they encouraged running your experiments directly from a fused plug into the mains, which at a young age I was more than happy to give a go with no further thoughts than well, the book tells me to!
I recall building an electro-magnet that was literally just a thick coil plugged straight into the mains with no grounding at all. I made a simple step down transformer and powered a 12V bulb from the 230V mains.
As I grew older I had less time to mess about and more need to just get things done.
I don't like extension cords lying around so I like to run proper patress boxes and brand new MK sockets to the locations I want, 2.5mm2 twin+earth through appropriately sized trunking to a plug on the end.
My guess is that the plug serves the same purpose as a fused spur but also makes the installations non permanent so should be legitimate for me to put in place. I've done this in pretty much every property I've lived in.
A recent socket install could probably do with some love as the power goes straight into a socket in the middle and then goes from that into two sockets, one on each side, pretty sure that's not legit but it's only got really low power (under 50W) devices plugged in under that desk so I have not rushed to fix it.
In terms of more typical actual domestic installation stuff, I've run radials from CUs to rooms under the supervision of a spark, added sockets to a ring, changed lighting fixtures including running new earth, changed switches (standard live on/off, dual control, smart switches as well), install mains smoke alarms where the fused spur is already present, check power supplies for faults and purely for the experience I've wired up a few CUs (on boards, not domestic installs).
In terms of work experience I mostly run low voltage cabling just now. Cat6, alarms, etc. It often carries PoE signal (up to 48V DC) but for some reason that's still classified as low voltage cabling work? (I thought 12V DC+ was typically 'high voltage' but cant see anything stating I can't run the Cat6 with PoE myself).
That's about it really. I've watched over many a spark doing commercial works too like running power to the floor boxes that we're terminating Cat6 into, new circuit installs whenever I've had them done and I'd be confident with researching and installing anything myself, however, I know there are things that could cause me liability if anything did go wrong and want to avoid that.
Soz for length of this reply.