Hi, I have been doing home electrical DIY for years. Not total rewires but new sockets here and there, a new ring main in the kitchen, installing the cooker etc,etc.
What are the regulations regarding DIY and home electrics? The woman who helped plan my kitchen for me said something about having to have a test certificate.... Surely not? I thought the regulations said the work had to be carried out by a "competent person".
IF I sell the house, would the buyers solicitor insist on such a test certificate? Why wouldn't I just say that no electrics have been done since I have lived here? It would be open to all sorts of deceit and abuse... ????
Briefly, if the work is notifiable and you are not a member of a competent persons scheme then you are supposed to submit a building notice covering the work you intend to do.
In case he has he may like to know that no matter how "good" someone is (eg has a degree in Electrical Engineering + 5 year timed served apprectiveship + 10 years practical electrical isntallation experience) that person still isn't deemed "a competent person" - basically because idiot Pestcott says so. The cowboys of course have I run away and we can all sleep safely in our beds. As other's have said
I have totally re-wired my house (more or less), about half that work was done AFTER the new regs came out. When i come to sell the house, if anything is said i shall say the work was done BEFORE the regs came out. Sounds like you could probably do the same.
Not really an option if you bought your house after the regs came into force though, and things were checked out at the time.
Anyone know how you get to become a "competent person"??? College course or the like?
simply saying it is no good, you need to prove it with paperwork etc, and if you can't, you will need to get somone in to check it all - and they may want to see the capping over the chasings too.
You join an approved body, and they will randomly test some of your installations each year (you pay for these to be tested too)...it's a 'club', like CORGI, except with electrics, you have a choice as there's 3 or
There are various theories about how it all came about ranging from,
1) jobs for the jobsworths
2) lobbying by industry associations to attempt to force tradespeople into their guilds
3) a tax take game by the government to make it easier to track tradespeople who might not have declared income but who now have a paper trail
4) a genuine attempt to improve electrical safety in the home.
The evidence is quite strong for (2) and very weak for (4)
You have the choice of a few courses of action:
a) give the installation work to a member of one of the electricians' mediaeval guilds. NICEIC would have you believe that they are the only game in town. This has all the credibility of the three famous lines that begin with "the cheque's in the post" and end with "mouth". At any rate, these people can self certify their work.
b) do the work yourself, submit a building notice at the local authority with a fee covering inspection and a certificate. For small works this can be > cost of (a).
c) carry on as before.
So what is the downside of (c)?
- You might get caught by the local authority and be made to do (b) or a regularisation of the paperwork which effectively costs the same or nearly the same. How might that happen? Nosey neighbour or if you were doing other higher profile work that draws attention.
- You might have a fire or other electrically related mishap, not through incompetence but another reason. The insurer might go through and check for certifications etc. These would not exist and you could be exposed; especially if there were injury or worse.
- When/if you come to sell the house, the purchaser's solicitor asks whether changes have been made. At this point you can lie, but that is ill advised because it's reasonably easy to detect that changes may have been made, even after the event. The honest course would be to say yes and then you will probably be asked to produce certificates (which you won't have). This would trigger a request for regularisation and imply an application as above. In effect, you would pay for an electrical inspection as opposed to the buyer perhaps paying for one. Cost, a few hundred pounds. In the context of a house transaction, two thirds of nothing.
I'm not advocating any particular course to take. If you are willing to discount the bad happening risk, and are able to do competent work, the most likely scenario is what may happen at the point of selling the property. Alternatively you can spend probably close to the same amount of money earlier on and have the paper trail.
On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 17:24:58 -0000 someone who may be "Kaiser Sose" wrote this:-
Depends which country you live in. If you have the misfortune to live in England or Wales then John Prescott has made your life more difficult but not made it safer.
You have to get caught within 6 months of completion of works, in which case, you can technically be looking at upto 6 months in gaol and/or upto a
5000 pound fine (IIRC) plus a criminal record. OTOH, unless you wired up a deathtrap or they *were* out to get you, no LBA is going to persue criminal charges for a technical breach (no paperwork for a competant job) - though they might use it as a threat to get you to comply. The few times prosecutions have been made and reported in the media seem to be aimed at people charging money for sub-standard and uncertified work and doing bodges repeatedly, not DIYers.
IIRC the LBA have some further powers available for a further 6 months to force compliance, and some powers which never expire, but these are rarely used except for the most extreme cases.
Very true, and probably the biggest worry. Of course it's hard to prove when work was done as the cable colour change failed to co-incide with Part P's introduction.
Two other courses of action:
Decline to answer (but don't lie) and tell the buyer to take it of leave it - how much that affects your chances of selling is upto you to decide.
Confess and either tell the buyer to take it of leave it or offer to buy an indeminity policy which is cheap, more or less worthless in practise but may give the buyer's solicitor a warm and fuzzy feeling. When I've been looking at houses, I've spotted work on windows and electrics which hasn't been through the papermill, and I've not been bothered - I've just chalked it up as something to check at survey time. There must be a certain percentage of the population who share my view, hence your potential market share of willing buyers does not drop to zero though it will decrease.
I've had one vendor cheerfully point out the lead sheathed lighting circuit cables in his loft - I've been grateful and mentally noted it as a must-fix-before-moving-in job, but it's not something that I would decline to buy a house over, much less a broken paper trail.
I do not believe the sale of a house in itself requires up to date building regs paperwork, any more than selling a car requires an MOT - but it is something that worries some types, and other types aren't much bothered.
For a bit of lateral thinking - replace
"doing electrics without Part P paperwork"
with
"replacing a vented heating system or a HW cylinder or a few windows/external doors without Part L paperwork"
and see how you feel about it then. Electricity is an emotive issue - and although it is a potentially dangerous thing, one has to bear in mind that the number of folk killed by fixed electrical installation faults per year in the whole country is only just into the double digits, by the government's own stats, which is next to bugger all compared to people who die on the roads or from a multitude of other classes of accident.
More like 10 or 11 I think. Including CORGI themselves.
NAPIT (another one of these guilds) made a bid to break the CORGI monopoly as being the only gas guild. The HSE, however, were having none of it (to the great relief of CORGI).
The better news for me is that CORGI are now one of the guilds whose members can self certify G3 compliance on unvented cylinders.
I shall not be bothering with registration for part F (Ventilation) or drainage all of which are now notifiable/self-certifiable.
A wiser course would be to state only minimal (but positive) factual info about the installation - eg 'so far as known electrical wiring complies with IEE regs 16th ed amend 2"; AND add a comment shifts the onus on to the buyer eg 'the purchaser is advised to satisfy himself as to the standard and safety of the electrical installation' (and of course similar statements should be made about about all other aspects of the structure about which enquiries are made).
Decline to answer questions relating to dates work done: do the authur scargill and answer a diferent question. Destroy all records which might contain a date and simply state that you have no recorded information about dates.
//snip//
chasing does not nromally require any capping. The sheath on FTE cable is normally considered sufficent protection from "mechanical damage".
And as long as it's a good fire you wouldn't have to worry about that!
I converted and wired a loft into bedrooms 20+ years ago and due to an earlier life as an Instrument tech, part of my training (and job) involved
415V 3 phase wiring so I signed off the building certificate At the time I reckoned I was a competent person under the then regs, nobody checked and the house is still standing! I do wonder if I can even change fuse now? under the new regulations!
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