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Percyprod

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There's been a few posts on here recently regarding poor workmanship on installations. Some have said it should be illegal for anyone other than a qualified and registered electrician to carry out wiring and testing. While I agree with this to a certain extent, how would it be enforced? Anyone can buy the gear for a wiring job, so you would have to stop it being sold to the general public., Which would upset a lot of shops! Plus, of course a lot of the poor work is carried out by qualified and registered electricians. More checking? If I rewire my house, whether it's a good or a bad job, no one would know, unless something went wrong, which of course it may. If I then sold the house, a certificate may be needed, which I wouldn't have. No problem, get a test done (is it a rice?), or drop the price to allow for a rewire. I'd be interested in any thoughts.
 
I think you’d need a change in legislation and something like the current scams (but one that’s not for profit and is answerable to an ombudsman) to initially assess competence and regurlarly spot check work with a hotline consumers could call if they believe something was done wrong to arrange an inspection, the bill for which would be footed by the customer if nothing was wrong and the tradesman if there was poor quality workmanship found. A system where the tradesman would be offered the opportunity to rectify improve skills, training and be placed on closer supervision for a determined period of time regarding the severity of the fault with workmanship or have membership revoked and be banned from working as an electrician obviously in an ideal world this would be Marvelous but it would be down to the customer to pick a contractor from the register so it would have to be well publicised to become common knowledge.
 
We had a similar idea with dno. If anyone made a booboo their authorisation was withdrawn, and depending on the severity of the deviation from cop they were sent on a course to rectify it or in extreme cases demoted eg. Jointer down to jointer's mate, or even sacked. I suppose like everything else it's down to cost. To be policed properly it would need a lot of manpower. Saying about the cost of a complaint by the customer, when we had area boards one of the regular jobs was to test meters for accuracy in a bill dispute. This meant the bill didn't have to be paid until the meter had been tested and found to be ok. This took up a lot of man hours, and costs were high. So they started charging £20 I think it was, which if the meter wss inaccurate they didn't have to pay. Disputes soon dropped!
 
The only time the electrics in a house seams to be checked is when a house is being sold and the morgage company or buyer ask for an inspection which does not happen in every case and if the seller does not have circtification for any work done they can just pay a indemnity insurance , so one way to help would be to make is compulsory that you have to have a valid eic or eicr and a gas cert before you sell the house, ok it will not solve the proble mbut at least it would be a start , after all would you buy a car with no MOT
 
The only time the electrics in a house seams to be checked is when a house is being sold and the morgage company or buyer ask for an inspection which does not happen in every case and if the seller does not have circtification for any work done they can just pay a indemnity insurance , so one way to help would be to make is compulsory that you have to have a valid eic or eicr and a gas cert before you sell the house, ok it will not solve the proble mbut at least it would be a start , after all would you buy a car with no MOT
Maybe this combined with my idea to make it more airtight and harder to get round
 
Good point Flanders. Of course you can buy a car with no mot, but probably wouldn't get an hp company to finance it, same with house, you can buy it with no certificate, but wouldn't necessarily get a mortgage.
 
We had a similar idea with dno. If anyone made a booboo their authorisation was withdrawn, and depending on the severity of the deviation from cop they were sent on a course to rectify it or in extreme cases demoted eg. Jointer down to jointer's mate, or even sacked. I suppose like everything else it's down to cost. To be policed properly it would need a lot of manpower. Saying about the cost of a complaint by the customer, when we had area boards one of the regular jobs was to test meters for accuracy in a bill dispute. This meant the bill didn't have to be paid until the meter had been tested and found to be ok. This took up a lot of man hours, and costs were high. So they started charging £20 I think it was, which if the meter wss inaccurate they didn't have to pay. Disputes soon dropped!
I was meaning only revoking the right to practice as an electrician if the tradesman refused to rectify it but I suppose there has to be a cut off you could only do the process so many times before being given the boot and told to go do an apprenticeship all over again or never work in the trade again
 
On watch dog last night they were claiming that the people who fit the smart meters were doing checks and identifying dangerous situations ,i think all they do is plug in a socket tester, maybe if you don't have a current eicr or eic you have to have an eicr before the smart meter is fitted.
 
I agree Leesparkykent. How can meter fixers test an installation? What qualifications do they have? When the guy came to fit meter to our stables it took him 1 1/2 hours, only test he did was polarity, and he wasn't sure about that!
 
I agree Leesparkykent. How can meter fixers test an installation? What qualifications do they have? When the guy came to fit meter to our stables it took him 1 1/2 hours, only test he did was polarity, and he wasn't sure about that!
what other tests do they need to do changing a meter? they have about 12 inches of tails/earth to get right, about the only thing they can do wrong is connect things the wrong way round. They're not going to go poking around in your installation.
Even the DNO when changing our cutout only checked the Ze and the polarity, they didn't bother with phase rotation. They did check (visually) our tails to decide on a fuse size.
 
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We are visiting another popular topic,i see...

I know individuals,who are not "certified,qualified or schemed up",and the work they do is exemplary,on occasion,stunning.

There are also,the folk who are fully in "the club",with dazzling vehicles and liveried attire...big adverts and web presence...

On occasion,i get to follow these heroes,and attempt to rectify the mess they have left,the fault they could not find...or do an investigation and report,on a system which either does not adhere to anything else in this universe or was sold fraudulently.

I have yet to have a doable scheme described to me,to prevent the above from occurring.
 
We are visiting another popular topic,i see...

I know individuals,who are not "certified,qualified or schemed up",and the work they do is exemplary,on occasion,stunning.

There are also,the folk who are fully in "the club",with dazzling vehicles and liveried attire...big adverts and web presence...

On occasion,i get to follow these heroes,and attempt to rectify the mess they have left,the fault they could not find...or do an investigation and report,on a system which either does not adhere to anything else in this universe or was sold fraudulently.

I have yet to have a doable scheme described to me,to prevent the above from occurring.
I agree there are many out there like this and it’s a complete kick in the sack to hard working honest sparks who take pride in their work, surely though with an attitude similar to the one in place for gas but a little more robust and not for profit would be a good start. Like making it illegal to tamper with electrical work if you aren’t qualified registered etc etc I know it can’t work all of the time and there will always be rogues but surely there is an improvement to what we have now there should be a minimum standard on qualifications random spot checks sanctions etc nothing is perfect but in my opinion it wouldn’t be hard to implement something like this with a bit of government backing
 
It'll never happen.
You would have to describe what specific authority,a person had to hold,to complete an electrical task somewhere between fitting a plug top,and building an arc-furnace.

It has to be specific,remember,because we are going to court...illegal means enforceable in law...

I prefer it where a large,national blue-chip company,with an ongoing national ad campaign,performs expensive,and arguably unnecessary electrical work,and i get to trundle along,dressed like a traveller,and casually point out a polarity error,and a power supply with only two cores...and who did that? Big Gasp :eek: i could not possibly comment.
 
I have a customer doing "battle" with a NICEIC contractor .......

They said they didn't need to do a certificate because of the recently installed new fuseboard ...........

Eventually they provided 1 MWC, despite making changes to 3 circuits ............... and introducing a fault into one of them

the battle continues......

The NICEIC have been "unhelpful" to say the least.
 
I have a customer doing "battle" with a NICEIC contractor .......

They said they didn't need to do a certificate because of the recently installed new fuseboard ...........

Eventually they provided 1 MWC, despite making changes to 3 circuits ............... and introducing a fault into one of them

the battle continues......

The NICEIC have been "unhelpful" to say the least.
Hopefully the NIC record complaints and use them as a guide to renewal (?). At least. They can't enjoy having rogues on board and have their reputation at stake, I'd have thought.
 
The only time the electrics in a house seams to be checked is when a house is being sold and the morgage company or buyer ask for an inspection which does not happen in every case and if the seller does not have circtification for any work done they can just pay a indemnity insurance , so one way to help would be to make is compulsory that you have to have a valid eic or eicr and a gas cert before you sell the house, ok it will not solve the proble mbut at least it would be a start , after all would you buy a car with no MOT
I woulkd if the car in question did not need an MOT under 3 years old.
 

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