A sensible arrangement (me thinks). Adding the sum health hazards and injuries of the act of installing cabling in walls and installing them in skirting boards, me thinks the boards are safest in total. The dust alone is reason enough, particularly if it contains old lead paint.
It's not in GB. Old. Hard to tell how old but it was a stacked stone house originally (not even cement or plaster), later rendered. There can't have been any electricity at first, cables were tacked to the walls.
Fortunately it's not in Nanny GB, it's where "practical" is of primary importance, nay survival depended on it. I don't have to worry much about regulations, but about practicality and safety. It looks like skirting boards are the best way, I'll just make it obvious that wires run in it. Mark K.
Oh piss off troll.
Well, few walls will have been painted with lead paint ever. Older skirting boards, quite likely. But most would wire sockets with the cable running vertically upwards from the floor - although in some houses maybe downwards from the floor above. The exception being kitchens, where work top height sockets will probably be wired horizontally.
I'm not too keen on the current idea of having sockets at the same sort of height as light switches. The likelihood of cables at an easily tripped over angle seem to me more of a hazard than bending down to a low socket.
Exactly! Well said. Quite possibly so many people will start to ignore petty over-beurocracy that it becomes uninforcable.
Good suggestions, many thanks. Mark K.
In my mum's place the cables were/are almost always in the floor voids rather than in the skirtings. This is pretty common for pre 1900 houses since the elctrics were fitted after the place was built, and ripping off the skirtings to install wires would be a PITA.
(the gas pipes for the lights were plastered into the walls when the place was built though)
To be fair the UK wiring regs represent very good practice from the point of view of both practicality and safety. So following the spirit of them will not do you any disservice even if you have no obligation to do so.
There is nothing in the UK regs that would preclude doing that either (if the sockets were also on the skirtings), and as you say given the construction of the house, that may be the best way forward.
Well, that's what I intend to do, and run wiring in between. I may fit a small inspection panel in the skirting board, mainly to give people a chance to look behind it and discover the wires. The mere presence of an inspection cover will give a pretty clear indication that there's stuff behind it.
Something else has crossed my mind: the fact that per regulations live mains wires are, electrically, only a mm or two away from all plumbing (assuming that the earth wire connects to the pipework as per dictats).....
Hehehe, I certainly handle it well enough not to have to be dictated to by anal retentives.
Many thanks for your comprehensive replies, I now have enough info to proceed in the most suitable manner. Mark K.
Sure, that's a popular place to put wires. In my case it's not an option though because the beams and floorboards are exposed to the room below. Replacing the skirting is not a big problem though. M.K.
Indeed. It must be one of the easiest job's in the world. Walk round the house and note if it has gas, electricty, water etc. Return to the office, click the boxes (yes/no and - if they bought the expensive version of the software "did it look dodgy") on the input form and press print.
The software then prints out one paragraph based on your above for each "present" with either "Some deterioration" or "No deterioration", and with "and" or "but" after the comma.
I always assume they pay a backhander to the building society and the whole thing is a joint con to take money off the householder. I was reinforced in this view when the last time I did this they found something that wasn't entirely standard and bugged out with the final clause in the software "You must employ a structural engineer".
Now that was a different story: I got a detailed and accurate report which found a fault that the surveyer had missed, said good things as well (ie, instead of "the masonary is over 10 years old and may require repointing" I got "the masonary is in good condition for its age"). Also, significantly, he charged less for the real job than the BS employed surveyor had charged for his idle stroll. Since then I'd pay for the absolute minimum that the BS require - viewing it as an additional charge on getting the mortgage and of no other value - and employ a SE for my own information.
I've decided "surveyor" in this context is based on survey in the old sense of "cast an eye over".
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