Do I need to rewire my house?

[ARWadsworth]

You can buy cars that have no MOT

Adam

[gort]

And as I pointed out to Drivel earlier in this thread, MOTs have a disclaimer on the back.

Dave

[ARWadsworth]

A car with no MOT will not have a disclaimer on either side of any paperwork but you can still but the car.

Adam

[Stephen Dawson]

snipped

Beg to differ, having done a periodic today on a 1987 built house. House was looking really good and would have gained a satisfactory report, but, whoever wired it up originally did not install the supplementary bonding in the bathroom, which goes down as a category 1 failure and then causes the property to be unsatisfactory. This was on top of the usual add-ons which we repaired as we carried out the inspection at the request of the customer.

We do lots of periodic inspections, both commercial and domestic and pride ourselves on being impartial. Yes, it would be nice to gain the remedial work from it but this does not always happen. As a matter of fact we are used by one of our customers to quality control thier own site electricians.

You can use any one to carry out a periodic, but only the two bigger organisations, to my knowledge, give access to inspection of demands if you have a potentional dispute with the contractor.

For those of you that are interested the two organisations are the Electrical Contractors Association

and the NICEIC

Another point of note is that a PIR is out of the scope of Part P as this is an 'installers scheme' only. They 'may' not be competent as inspection and test work. As I said, if you use an ECA Registered Contractor or an NICEIC Approved Contractor you have some form of recourse if you are not convinced.

I will stick my neck out now and use my business sig. We are proud to be Registered and Approved by several organisations and we try to do our best for our clients.

Regards

Stephen Dawson Director Fox Electrical Services Ltd

34 Portchester Rd Portsmouth PO2 7JB Tel [phone] Fax [phone]

NICEIC Approved Contractor ECA Registered Member NICEIC Domestic Installer BRE/ECA Part 'P' registered installer Trustmark Scheme Approved

[Mark S.]

Several thousand? :-~

Mine just cost me £1500.00 for a two bed semi, done in three days.

Mark S.

[gort]

I did'nt say anything about cars without MOT. I repeat, I pointed out to Drivel that MOTs have a disclaimer because he said Houses should have an MOT to protect buyers. OK !

Dave

[Peter Parry]

Wow.

I'm sure it does. How many people have been killed or injured by inadequate supplementary bonding in the last decade?

Could we have this in a recognizable language please?

What recourse? On their own figures NICEIC pay out in about 4% of unsatisfactory cases reported to them

I'm sure you are.

Which has nothing to do with the several thousand pounds your clients have to pay for you to be registered with assorted trade bodies.

There are good tradesmen and bad tradesmen. Paying to belong to a trade organisation and paying for some alphabet soup to put after the trading name is not a differentiator between them.

[Bob Eager]

From discussion in the past, one might even wonder about the reverse...

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Why are you commenting on things you know nothing about? You can't learn about such things from adverts, doncha know...

An MOT on a car simply says it is 'safe' at the time of inspection. As is the OP's wiring, by the sound of it.

Perhaps you'd name one MOT regulation which require things 'to be brought up to date'?

I can't think of one. All a car has to do is conform to the requirements of when it was built to pass an MOT.

Do you actually own a motor car?

[Stephen Dawson]

carry out, I don't think I get a six year warranty from orange, altough a I pay them several thousand pounds a year to use thier services. Perhaps you should look at your own corner for poor service, excessive charges and the like.

Had you not thought the 4% thast the NICEIC pay out on are the only 4% that are justified ? Maybe people do not use the service that is availible to them, they just get on a website or newsgroup banging on about paying several thousand pounds to be a member or an approved contractor.

Do you have an annual assessment to check that you are working correct, that your tets equipment is manintained and fit for purpose?

You do not just pay your money and then get accepted, you are vetted by technical officers that your knowledge is up to date, that you have the correct technicl manuals, not just the OSG that you all seem to love, and is a good reference book.

Taken from the ECA website The cover of the ECA Warranty is provided at no additional cost to clients of ECA registered members. Subject to the terms and conditions of the scheme the insurance backed ECA Warranty guarantees to clients of ECA members that electrical installation work failing to comply with the Relevant Standards as defined in the Warranty will be rectified. The Warranty Period is 6 years from the completion date of the work. Warranty claims must be notified during this period if they are to be valid.

It is important to note that the ECA Warranty will not be valid unless both the member and the party with whom the member is in contract sign a copy of the member's relevant Warranty Certificate. The completed Warranty Certificate is to be retained by the party with whom the member is in Contract and will be required to evidence a claim against the ECA Warranty.

The NICEIC do not offer a warranty scheme, but is more widely recognised by the general public.

If you are not happy with the quality of the work by a registered or approved member then complain, it is what the ECA and NICEIC are there for. If you don't coplian about poor workmanship then how can they deal with it?

And to answer your question on the bathroom bonding, I don;t know, but how many have been saved by it being correctly fitted in the event of a fault, we'll never now.

Regards

Stephen Dawson

[The Natural Philosopher]

you can if you want...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Indeed. I hope to get my 1972 spoitfire back on teh raod.

Thank god its excused emissions tests, cos with a fast road cam and twin

1 3/4 SUs and no cat it would NEVER pass em..

[Doctor Drivel]

Very sad to see this sort of drivel in this day and age.

[meow2222]

Stephen Dawson: Peter Parry: Stephen Dawson:

Why not? Why are you giving safety advice and and safety test failures on the basis of something that you've no idea whether its a real world risk or not?

The answer is youre doing what you were taught without asking questions. In the real world I dont believe bathroom bonding has saved any lives, and the large pool of money it costs to go round bonding bathrooms could have saved hundreds of lives had it been spent on non-slip stair finishes or extra handrails. This is something that has been discussed a fair bit on here, you could google if interested.

NT

[meow2222]

Very old vehicles are exempt from all sorts of things that would be required on a new car. Single circuit brakes are permitted, and split rims, which would guarantee a test failure on a modern car. I think even dipped beam headlights are optional on the oldest ones.

NT

[Doctor Drivel]

You are dreaming. If this house was properly inspected the points would come to light and the system would be brought up to scratch and all rectified before the purchaser moved in. He was under the impression that this house was up to scratch. It clearly wasn't. The system is wrong, all the services should be properly inspected and brought up to date on purchase, and he should not be allowed to move in before it is updated.

If someone wants to buy a substandard house, (maybe for renovation), then mortgage companies should not be involved unless it is clear what the intent is.

I have known many people move into houses and the electrical system is a joke, like one radial 2.5mm cable serving all of the kitchen, even the electric oven. When all appliances are on the cable got warm. This is typical. If proper house MOTs were in place this would have been picked up.

If you buy a used car and want to use it immediately it needs an MOT to use on the road. You can buy a car without an MOT, but you can't use it. The same should be with a house. A house sold without an MOT should not be occupied.

[Peter Parry]

A total of just 5 cases in the UK in one year? Undoubtedly they are the only one who were able to justify their claims, whether they were the only justifiable ones is another matter.

The problem with bodies such as NICEIC and ECA is that they only exist if they can recruit members. If they make their testing and vetting too good people don't join them. They are therefore always aiming at the lowest common standard. How many individuals or companies are removed from any of these organisations each year for failing inspections?

Which simply means the cost is factored in to the fees, the client still pays for it.

So without adequate knowledge of the consequences of the omission you recorded it as "Code 1 indicates a dangerous, or potentially dangerous, condition that requires urgent attention to make the installation safe.", the same class as bare live wires dangling from a wall?

[meow2222]

If one prepares a report for a client, one is required by law to give honest information. It is difficult to see how reporting lack of bonding in this way would be a) realistic b) honest c) factually correct d) anything bar ignorance or touting for work.

I'm not wishing to give Stephen a hard time, he/you just may want to do some thinking about all this.

NT

[Stephen Dawson]

Do you then condone the ignoring of the potenetial of a potential differnce between exposed extreaneous conductive metal part, in a location of increased risk, such as a location containing a bath or shower, or other items required by BS7671 which is not written by the NICEIC or ECA or any other trade association to be correct??

If I did not report this and then someone was injured I would then be held liable. More than likely the fault that causes the metal to beoce live would have have been caused by someone inexperinced in electrical installation work.

I do also object to you questioning my honesty regarding this, and I feel that you should be careful before making such a comment, which I am now going to treat with the contempt it deserves.

As I have asked before, NT, how about letting us know your credentials in the electrical installation field.

Regards

Steve Dawson

[Peter Parry]

No, but nor is it a major hazard which requires urgent attention. Risk assessment is not simply a matter of listing all possible failings and ranking them equally but of assessing both consequences and likelyhood. There are many thousands of houses in the UK with no equipotential bonding. There are very few, if indeed any (I have never seen any recorded for 40 years), deaths or injuries caused as a result.

In fact the potential consequence of _having_ supplementary bonding is that what could have been a slight shock can turn into a fatal accident. Equipotential bonding makes sure that in the most common failure scenarios you connect to a good earth!

It _used_ to be a problem 50 years ago when people took radiant electric fires into bathrooms to keep warm and balanced them on the side of the bath. It isn't so much any more.

It is the sort of defect which should be sorted out when convenient and when other work is being done - not treated as a major emergency.

It isn't a question of doubting your honesty. I have no doubt you are absolutely sincere. It is a matter of questioning whether such a fault should be categorised in the same class as exposed live wiring, an immersion heater wired with bell flex and a complete absence of earthing. Quite plainly it shouldn't. It is certainly brings into question the standard of risk assessment done by trade bodies if they think it should.

What concerns me is not that you believe it is an emergency requiring instant attention but that trade organisations also believe so. It might be because they are all really worried about householders. It might also be because encouraging tradesmen to charge a hundred pounds for a job which takes a short time is good for business.

We are all familiar with the common Corgi trick of condemning an installation and turning off the gas not to save life but to speed up a purchasing decision. A similar trick is not uncommon amongst electricians either, especially if they think an adverse report can hold up a house sale.

I do wonder why the two most common "failures" on periodic inspections require a new consumer unit and supplementary bonding - two of the quickest and most profitable jobs around. NICEIC even produce a "helpful" (if inaccurate) leaflet for electricians to hand to customers as a sales aid to explain why they need to spend a hundred pounds or more on a bit of wire.

Organisations such as ECA and NICEIC serve their members, there is nothing wrong with that. There is everything wrong with them claiming to serve their members customers when quite plainly they do nothing of the sort.