I've had a couple of ceilings replaced on insurance after escape of water. The insurance company appointed general contractors who have been project managing the repairs, and the general contractors sent out a (further subcontracted) electrician to replace 5 light fittings which had to be removed for the ceiling replacement and decoration.
The electrician took it upon himself to poke around the system, and decided the house earth bonding is not up to current specs. Specifically, the bonding to the mains water is 6mm sq rather than 10mm sq. He then tried to get me to agree to pay him 350 pounds to upgrade the cable (and split the lighting circuit since there are two conductors going into one breaker on the consumer unit, on the breaker of the circuit which he will replace lights on), and regards this work as necesasry under Part P before any other work can be done.
The electricians verbal position is, as I understand it: "prevoious contractors bodged it, house is really dangerous, can't put the lights up, most other electricians wouldn't touch the job so I'm doing you a favour, insurance company wont pay, better just agree to pay me my reasonable fee now so we can get you sorted, I can fit you in next Tuesday but then I'm really busy and it will take ages so you ought to agree now". This was after I called his bluff on a number of attempts to get even more work out of me, e.g. "ceiling roses should only have one cable going into them" and "someone drilled into your main fuse; the earth should be nowhere near there so obviously your earth is shorted to the mains"(!).
I suspect the main fuse and earth bonding to the water pipes (which is about a 5m run, currently through the ceilings and walls), was probably to specification when the house was built in 1979, and hasn't been touched since then. The bonding to the gas main has been worked on more recently, and now has two separate cables, both of which look about 6mm sq; I assume this was an attempt to get the total conductor area to 10mm sq.
The only tricky part of the actual work I want done, i.e. simply replacing the lights which had been removed, is that I'd like to fit feature lights where there were previously pendants from ceiling roses, and one of the ceiling roses has four cables (circuit in, circuit out, two switches), and it looks a bit tricky (and against regs?) to screw 2+ conductors into each terminal block point supplied with the new light fixture.
People seem to like to give views in this group, so my questions:
- Is it a legal requirement to ensure earth bonding is up to current specifications before any electrical work can be done on the property? (I've had other regulated electricians doing other work since 2005 who have not commented, and also since 2005 the electricity supplier replaced the meter). 2. Is it within current regs to leave the ceiling rose fitted and mount a light fixture on top of it? There should be no problem mechanically securing both the ceiling rose and the new fixture. The ceiling rose would end up inside the light fixture, with a good few mm of clearance from the metal body of the light fixture. Obviously the new metal fixture has to be earthed.
- The lights to be replaced are in the lounge, except for one ceiling strip light in the kitchen. I'm somewhat confused by Part P as to whether replacing a light fitting within the kitchen requires LABC declaaration and certification. I'd have no particular concern fitting these lights myself, but if this does require statutory paperwork I'd probably hire a (qualified and registered) friend to, at the very least, check my work.
Thanks,
Dickon