DIY electrical work after 1st January 2005

[Andy Hall]

This is concerning but not surprising. If you're into one of these other trades, you have to know how to put a few more wires in the right place.

[Mike Harrison]

Surveyors don't usually test electrics now, I don't see how anything will change.

[Tony Bryer]

IOW just like the secondhand car market - A1 Approved from a franchise dealer with price to match, or auction/small ads buyer beware. And as with cars you may find that the extra cost of compliance is recovered when you sell: what price a BMW "serviced by a mate" compared with FSH?

[Tom W]

Hi

Can anyone tell me where to find out exactly what jobs will need regs approval after 1/1/05? I've not installed any new circuits yet, but have greatly extended my ground floor ring main (from 3 sockets to 19 sockets, still within the floor area regulation). Apart from the fact that I've not had to fiddle with the CU, how does this differ from installing a new circuit in the eyes of the regulators? I plan to do something similar with the upstairs circuit next uear... What about the low-voltage halogen spots in the lounge? And the second switch for the hall light? And how will any inspector know what I did in '04 and what I did in '05?

Cheers

Tom

[James]

But the irony is that a house with crumbling 50 year wiring which has not been touched requires no certification, whereas if the same house is competently DIY rewired without BCO approval it is regarded by the designers of Part P as dangerous.

[BigWallop]

They won't know what's changed unless, blessings forbid, something drastic happens or you come sell the house in the future. The electrics, as well as all other services to the building, will need checking during the survey that the seller has to have done when the other new regs come to fruition. It is also being advised that, when the property comes up for sale or transfer, that the vendor has one full survey done on the property, and which will cover all changes to shape, layout and extension, and internal services supplied with the property.

This isn't just a change to the wiring requirements and the way these done. It's a change to the whole way that the properties are sold on to others. Instead of each individual would be buyer having their own survey done before an offer is made, the seller will have to have a full structural and plan layout survey of the property to hand to the buyer, to say that the house is and has been done to full safety and health standards.

These only look like small changes to each individual service, but it is actually a blanket change covering all aspects of the building and supply industries.

[Andy Hall]

You can look at the Statutory Instrument, or the Approved Document on the ODPM web site.

This will not be an exempted work. You are allowed to add a spur or replace a faulty cable or wiring accessories and be exempt but that's about it.

You can still do the work yourself but then you have to have it inspected by informing the building control department at the local authority,

Even extra low voltage isn't exempted. AFAICS, there is nothing that even excludes a doorbell.

He won't.

[Steven Briggs]

In message , fred writes

Which of course makes a complete mockery of the whole business. "Fly by Night Kitchens Ltd" just get _one_ of their monkeys^H fitters off an appropriate course, join NICEIC, and hey presto the cowboys in the field continue as usual, with their diagonal wiring routes and choc-blocks buried in plaster style workmanship.

[Ed Sirett]

Agreed. Except that houses are refurbished from time to time which cars generally aren't.

[Tony Bryer]

But AIUI if a registered person does work to which Part P applies he has to give the customer a certificate confirming that it has been done correctly and tested. If it then comes out that the work is as you describe the person is in deep trouble - more likely through being sued than Part P enforcement by the LA admittedly.

[Andy Hall]

True, but how is it detected?

I can only see a small numer of ways:

- The work is part of a larger thing where the BCO is involved for inspection and happens to notice something awry and gets it checked.

- Something bad happens like a fire. We already know that the stats on that indicate that it's very improbable on a fixed wiring issue. Since there's nothing covering old failing wiring, part P doesn't help with this.

- NICEIC or equivalent body does an inspection. AIUI, the notion is for that to be similar to CORGI and about two customers per member a year. If the electrician does, say, 100 jobs a year then this is a 2% sample rate. Not very useful.

- Property is sold and buyer's solicitor/surveyor picks it up. I think that this is the most likely.

[BigWallop]

The part above is the one that is going to bring everything into line. It is soon coming that the seller has the house the surveyed before a sale, not the buyers. So in a time when the house is going up for sale, the seller needs the new paperwork to say the house is up to sellable condition, which includes the safety of all appliances and permanent fixtures that are being sold with house.

I do wish people wouldn't just pick the one new part of one small requirement, but actually looks at the new parts of all the new requirements that are springing up in all the trades conditions of work act. They are all working together on this you know. It's not just "Part P" of the small changes, it's a blanket coverage of all the trades. Read more about this rest of the changes that are taking place shortly before going on about this silly little Part P.

[Tony Bryer]

One more: there's some fallout over the work and the first thing the customer's solicitor advises is to get an independent report. Which will either point up no Part P certificate or one issued for work that is blatantly nonconforming.

[RichardS]

Excellent, so in this new utopia, I will no longer be able to sell a house that has substandard wiring? Where the hell does that leave the old lady next door who has limited funds at her disposal, but a house ripe for sale (should she need to), complete with 1950s wiring - bakelite switches and the lot?

If seller's packs are so great, why aren't they introduced on a voluntary basis? In that case houses with them would surely be at an advantage, and therefore people would naturally opt to get a seller's pack in order to increase the saleabilty of their house.

The problem of course is that the motivation of the person commissioning the survey is all completely wrong from the buyer's point of view. If I sell a house and am forced to get a survey then quite frankly I will be looking for the cheapest compliant survey that I can possibly get - the absolute minimum. If a defect is borderline, then the pressure is that it is not included in the report.

From a buyer's perspective, I want the most comprehensive survey possible, and would want such a borderline defect to be included on the report. In that way I can apply pressure to the seller to reduce the price to something more realistic taking this into account.

The cost of your surveys will also increase across the board, because surveyors no longer have a single "client" who can sue - the report is open to any buyer who relies upon it. Their PI will rise.

requirements

But "silly little Part P" is very indicative of the mindset of a government that wants to control transactions between free individuals in an ever more detailed way.

I would rather like regulation of trades, but there are many different ways of achieving this.

If I employ a Registered Electrician to do some work then it would be good to knwo that in order to be able to use the title "Registered Electrician" then this means something (similar to Solicitors, Chartered Accountants, Certified Accountants, etc) and that there is a governing body that I can turn to in the event of a dispute. It might impose conditions such as run-on indemnity insurance similar to that required by RICS surveyors. "Qualified Electrician" might be a similarly protected description. This legislation would not be difficult to enact.

However, if I use my own free will and employ a non-registered person then on my own head be it. There are such recourses to law as negligence and suing under contract, you know, and there are many legal firms that will take on such work on a no-win-no-fee basis.

Similarly, the government seems incapable of grasping the fact that people do generally wish to preserve their own lives and their families' also. So, your average conciencious DIYer will in fact only undertake work within their grasp, and if it spirals out of control would eventually call someone in to sort out the mess.

Where does it stop? Should I not be able to inflate the tyres on my car lest I do it incorrectly and cause an accident? What about climbing a ladder - that's dangerous. Perhaps I should be able to produce a ladder safety certificate before I am allowed to hire, borrow or buy a ladder? Circular saws are dangerous things, you know.

Slowly but surely we are constructing a deskilled society who will be unable to assess risk and if they c*ck something up will always think first "it must be somebody else's fault".

[Andy Hall]

This is another complete nonsense. Who in their right mind would rely solely on information provided by the vendor or somebody appointed by him? There is a fundamental conflict of interest with this, no matter how much is said about professional integrity etc. I am sure that some unscrupulous estate agents will have their tame "professionals" lined up to provide information that while perhaps not a direct lie will have getouts or be economical on what is said to give the barest minimum of information.

In the end, buyers, if they want to have reasonable certainty will still want to have their own surveys so this only adds to cost and creates jobs for the boys.

If you believe that, you would believe anything. Have you been taking Prescott classes or something.

All of these new self certification schemes are basically the same thing. They appear to be providing the consumer with some protection and cost the taxpayer quite a lot of money to create. However, it's nothing like the money required to do a proper job with supervision, so the government effectively outsource this to the trade associations. However, the same cost issue applies. The money simply isn't there to do a complete inspection job in all cases. Another effect of the outsourcing is that the opportunity for this to be joined up is lost. Do you imagine that FENSA will talk to NICEIC on a detailed level? Of course not.

The basic, core building regulations and methods of operating them through BCOs make a lot of sense, but the self certification schemes certainly do not if the objective is as you describe. It simply won't work.

As the Americans would say, the whole thing is one big circle jerk. I hope that the government participants will get to eat the soggy biscuit before too long.......

[BigWallop]

A sellers survey will be a thorough check on all existing fixed or portable appliances, including it's flex and connection unit, akin to the current PAT requirement. Any appliance that is installed and being sold with the house as part of the sale, which will include the silliest table lamp. Any central heating system will be fully tested for soundness on all its parts. Electrical systems, and all tapping from it, will be fully tested for correct operation and grading. Drainage and damp proofing will be fully tested, along with all the water services and internal plumbing. The house will have to comply to the current insulation requirements. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So you don't get a choice of what cost survey you apply for, as everyone seems to be taking this back to costs, but a standard survey that must comply to national and European requirements. The whole point is to harmonise across the union as well as some international guidelines.

Once fully in place, this will harmonise costs across all trades as well. Plot buying for new developments will also be graded on the application of current mains services which are already in the area. This is unless the developers themselves are willing to pay the full costs for new mains services being introduced to their site. This is currently in the main supplied through local authority funds. Main services include roads and street lighting as well as gas telephone and all the rest.

Because we are now becoming an international community, not just "Us Brits" getting our own way or having to invest public money into new builds just to get funds from housing sales to an area. Foreigners also complain a lot more than we do, and they also barter with the workforce to get the best prices they can. "Us brits" usually sit back and take what price the geezer offers us when he gives his guestimate after the quick look round he has. That won't be allowed to happen soon, just wait and see.

All in all the new small changes that are slowly being introduced across all the trades, will make huge differences to the ways the trades are doing business. All other countries, developing or not, seem to be doing better business than Britain in the international community over the last few years. So the changes are coming along to make trade of workers, as well as goods, more competitive in the world market, not just here in the UK.

We currently export more graduate students abroad than we can keep here in the UK. Why? Because of costs. Wages and all round lifestyles in other places are drawing away our own people, trained and paid for in part by us all, because the grass is really greener on the other side now.

And everyone still seems to be picking out just this silly little part of the new regulations. The rest are being slowly introduced to prevent and all out battle in trying to change all the systems at once. Slow but sure is the way this is going to go, and rightly so, in my own honest opinion.

[BigWallop]

It is a blanket survey for all property sales across the UK, and must be done by the vendor themselves unless they allow an agent on their behalf to appoint one. It is set in stone what things are tested and checked, not just by a tame surveyor but, by a fully qualified surveyor who just now is wasted on fifteen minute trips to a house to check if it has a roof, doors and windows. I do think that most of these "fully qualified" people will have to be imported to start with because, as far as I've seen, the people doing surveys here just now are no more qualified than a guy sweeping streets.

[Andy Hall]

.. and who is going to police these "fully qualified surveyors" to make sure that they are honest and competent?

Where is the check and balance to protect the buyer in all of this?

As a buyer, I may look at a report of this nature, but as no more than a data point because it has been arranged and paid for by the seller. That notion is fundamentally broken in terms of the validity for the buyer.

Sorry, but I don't buy into this utopian nonsense.

[Andy Hall]

Really? Will it? Who is going to make sure of that and to check the quality of the information presented? You are talking here of something beyond a typical full structural survey as done here and probably into four figures to do.

How is an Edwardian house going to comply with current insulation requirements? Will people be mandated to rewire before sale?

Why? This kind of harmonisation is demonstrably impossible even if it were worth doing.

I travel extensively around the rest of Europe and have done for 25 years - I probably spend about a third of my time outside the country.

I certainly have no problem with harmonisation where it makes sense, but this doesn't.. How on earth can you compare what is appropriate as a building standard in the west of Ireland with what makes sense for an apartment in Poland; or a house in Kiruna compared with one in Bari? It's ridiculous to suggest that those should be harmonised.

One also has to realise that the interpretation and application of legislation varies hugely among EU member states because of the different cultural values and importance placed on different issues. Do you really expect a builder in the Ruhrgebiet to have the same attitudes as one in Lisbon?

??? Why? Why do costs need to be harmonised? The economic profiles of these are different from country to country.

Lovely. Now how are you going to account for a common practice in Greece and parts of Italy where somebody buying a plot for development has to pay off local officials in case ancient artifacts are found and the local authority comandeers the land with little or no compensation as an ancient monument.

I think we'll wait for a long time as will most of the populations of other European countries from what I see and hear.

I see more mobility of people all the way round. People I talk to in Denmark, Sweden and Germany, to name a few examples, make the same comments. The grass may be greener in some cases, but the flower beds can be full of weeds.

Because it is poorly constructed and will not achieve what it has been billed to do. It is also indicative of a potential raft of unnecessary interfering legislation in people's lives and their homes and should be recognised for what it is - a play by self interest groups

A stealth tactic if ever I saw one.

I am reminded of a famous work by C.S. Lewis (of Narnia books fame), The Screwtape Letters. (not Screwfix).

It covers a series of letters between a junior and a senior devil and their attempts to lead an unfortunate human astray.

comment about "slow but sure" reminds me of the close of one of the letters------

"You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,

Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE"

It could so easily be a conversation between a current cabinet minister and his junior...........

[BigWallop]

Eventually, yes. All the trades will be intermingled between countries, and things will rub off from all types of attitudes as this becomes the norm'. This government wants and needs the "Auf Wedersien Pet" attitude back in the community if it is to survive through two more elections as they plan too. The more they can make harmonisation between the EU member states, the better for them to produce trade in workers to all the new developing countries that are proposing to join. It is seen now that these countries currently have labour but not skilled labour, so they will need the skills from other members to bring them into line with the EU administration requirements.

The member countries currently have legislations controlling who and how the skilled work is done, so is now becoming part of UK legislation. It is reckoned as the normal practice when the skills are introduced from other member states, so if you're not registered as being competent doing these types of jobs, you don't get the chance to tender for work in other places.