OP
- Reaction score
- 1,050
For all I say about the IET lining coffers justifying some crap etc I really do think they do a good job there is nothing in AMD 3 I think is a waste of time or unnecessary but it just seems to be quite funny that the editions and amendments come at predictable intervals and by funny I mean a pain in the --- because you’ve got to take out days from work to go to the updates and of course shell out quite a bit of money to do said course purchase a shed load of new books and attempt to justify to your customers why suddenly they need xyz when for years they’ve only had w and they haven’t been electrocuted yet. All at the same time as keeping your rates as low as possible, despite the continuous and ever increasing raft of regs bombarding you from every angle that you should comply with all the training updating etc, to win work because if you didn’t dangerous Dave would just come along under cut you and before you know it your out of business.It is quite frustrating to suddenly have a good customer that used to trust you and you’ve been doing jobs for for years call you up and accuse you of ripping them off speccing up work they didn’t need just because the other “electrician” they got in after you, said you were talking sh**e and you didn’t need xyz and w would be fine.
As I said in the op I am all for upgrading to higher safety practices/equipment but when these regs come out and everyone’s talking about them and it’s not retrospective how can you justify installing a new metal CU because there was something on the news about it but the man from the BBC/NIC/whatever said that if you had a old CU you wouldn’t have to change it. So yeah true but if your going to alter or add circuits say sockets your going to need RCDs on said circuit as it’s a requirement for all sockets to be RCD protected they didn’t mention that though did they do then you’re left with two choices - slightly cheaper add a garage type CU beside the main one and feed your sockets from their or change the CU but now you need that metal one those trusted guys from the BBC/NIC etc etc said you didn’t need. Ok so you convince them but because of all the publicity it received they are still not sure so they find this other “electrician” who says it’ll be fine and adds the sockets in does a good job too other than the RCDs so the customer calls you up irate saying you were trying to rip them off and you end up round their house with the big f****ng yellow book to justify yourself and show them the other guys a cowboy they believe you but what’s the chances of getting that customer back again? I wish the IET would publish books like the homeowners Guide to the regs, the shop owners guide to the regs, the office managers guide to the regs, stating whats required and in what circumstances so that they can make an informed choice themselves as to who is doing it right and who doesn’t give a s**t instead of leaving it to muggins to try and justify all the extra effort and indeed cost of 4 new double sockets. So yeah I’ll have a wee vent and personally I think AFDDs might be a good thing when or if they work like they should and yeah I think thenIET needs to keep doing what they do but the industry as a whole and how the regs are passed down to the consumer needs an overhaul.
