Plumbers and Heating

[Chris J Dixon]

I've worked with one or two of those.

Chris

[Stephen]

I remember getting interested in DIY when I was a kid. I would do odd jobs for Gran. These increased in complexity and skill level required.

One day I was rewarded by Gran with a weekly magazine subscription to a DiY folder collection by Marshall Cavendish in the early 1990's.

It was a weekly one and ran for 2 years. Think the weekly cost was a 2 quid, so total cost was 200 odd quid. You did end up with seven very big ring binders though with 104 weeks worth of weekly inserts.

Anyone remember those? I've still got mine. I have not looked at it in over 7 years. I expect some of the stuff is somewhat out of date with updated building regs we have now.

[SteveW]

But you'll be undercut by an East European who's willing to take lower pay than you can live on, while they live in a multi-occupancy house, splitting the costs and saving up to take a lump sum home that will be worth far more there.

SteveW

[SteveW]

These days to become a member of one of the Institutes you generally need at least an MSc and a number of years of experience.

Many other countries legally protect the term Engineer and prevent non-members using the term, pretty much like Doctors, Barristers, etc. and in these countries, Engineers enjoy the same status, levels of pay and respect.

SteveW

[gremlin_95]

Where I work, to be called an Engineer you have to have to be qualified to minimum HNC level; someone educated to this level is known as an 'Intermediate Engineer'.

[John Rumm]

I remember in my first job in a branch of GEC, they seemed to reverse all the job titles. Technician level jobs got a title of "Engineer", and Engineering jobs meant you were called a "[Junior|Senior] Technologist"

(although I was pleased to learn that I somehow fell through a gap in the system - entering as a new graduate, got the job title of "Software Engineer" which was a title they had never used before (or after it seems)!

[alan]

That's because with a bit of research on the Net you can usually find out how to do it. You don't have to build up a 5 year collection of DIY magazines to make sure that they have covered the task that you want to do tomorrow.

[alan]

Wasn't that more to do with pay scales? Some of GEC/Marconi had to pay the people they wanted to keep more money but didn't what to give the whole of the technical workforce the same salary increases. They split the job titles.

[John Rumm]

Don't know... other bits of Marconi proper in our area I have observed did not seem to use those titles though

[newshound]

This will become less true over time, as their wealth and standard of living rises. Or ours falls, of course. Even in some of the apocalyptic visions in the press at the moment, one can be reasonably confident that plumbing skills will still be valued in 50 years time.

[Adrian]

How dare the basic economic laws of supply and demand work against a constant never-ending spiral of price inflation!

[Adrian]

Perhaps the Germanic-style kudos inherent in the word "engineer" should apply?

Plumber - can fit pipes. Heating engineer - can solve heating problems.

[newshound]

It's an interesting point, but a plumber never needs to solve a differential equation analytically, although to diagnose a modern boiler he might need some knowledge of electronics (including the ability to use a DVM and/or data logger), materials science, fluid dynamics, and heat transfer theory. And he might, if he is any good, end up solving differential equations with a spreadsheet (without ever having heard of explicit Euler integration schemes).

I suspect that part of the problem in the UK is that "Universities" used to be for the intellectually elite, "Technical Colleges" for the manually skilled. With half the population going to universities, these should now be teaching plumbing (sorry, "Heating Engineering"). But I don't think that enough of them are.

[newshound]

These days of course they do the same with the title "Manager"

[Tim Watts]

On Tuesday 18 February 2014 11:59 newshound wrote in uk.d-i-y:

There are relatively few "managers" who can actually manage anything competantly.

Managers, like politicians, get the job because they are good at smooching/brown noseing higher managers and because they are sod all use at anything else.

[harryagain]

Problems in this sort of equipment are solved by previous experience. Knowledge of weak design aspects. And by substituting complex parts. Most equipment can be fixed with about six spare parts. And 90% of problems will need just one of them.

No advanced education required, just common sense. Zero knowledge of electronics.

[newshound]

In my industry, neither the job nor the competency changes; just the job

*title*. Oh, and the "real" managers become directors.

[harryagain]

Plumber= Domestic work. Heating engineer = Industrial/commercialwork.

[SteveW]

Oh, yes, things will even out, but that could take decades. Why would someone want to train in a skill where they end up being undercut from the start?

SteveW

[SteveW]

Industrial/commercial is still a plumber. Plumbers may well be able to "design" standardish systems, but they will not have the background academic knowledge to be able apply their experience and knowledge to something way out of the ordinary.

SteveW