Electrical report

[Richard Grounddiver]

a potential house buyer is asking for an electrical report on my property what does the entail is there a standard form or is it just a report written by the electrician.

[zikkimalambo]

How old is the house?

When was it last re-wired?

It seems to be the flavor of the month at the moment (last few years) for "Surveyours" to put a couple of lines in their reports to the effect that the electrics seemed to be in good order, but the potential purchaosr would be well advised to get an electrical report.

At least they are being up front about it, whe nwe sold our last place, the Estate Agents said that the purchaser wanted to have the meter inspected. This involved an electrician coming along and taking off every electrical fitting in the house and checking it. This meant major disruption while my wife was in the house with a young baby.

Fortunately, everything was fine (fine enough for the purchaser to go ahead), but I wonder who would have been responsible if a wire or two had broken off when he removed a fitting?

Depending how desperate you are to sell the place, I would politely suggest that they are very welcome to have the testing done anytime after completion!

[Andy Wade]

Yes, there is a standard form called a "periodic inspection report" aka PIR. This is defined in the wiring regulations (BS 7671) and involves detailed inspection and testing of the wiring installation (but not of cables hidden from view in walls and under floors, etc.). See, for example

(but note that, contrary to what some people would have you believe, NICEIC members do not have a monopoly on doing PIRs).

The electrician doing a PIR should be competent in inspection and testing - i.e. they should have a C&G 2391 certificate. A full PIR is not cheap - it involves a lot of work to do properly. Find out how serious your buyer is by suggesting that they cover the cost.

Some electricians will offer a lower level of reporting at lower cost, using names like 'safety check' or 'visual inspection'. Here there is no standard format and some reports of this kind are of very dubious value, so /caveat emptor/.

[Andrew Gabriel]

It's really up to your potential house buyer what they are willing to pay for.

[ARWadsworth]

Ask the potential customers to pay the cost and accept that it is a days disruption for you. If your house passes with flying colours then if the sale falls through you can use the report to your advantage to other possible purchasers.

I cannot understand anyone buying a house for hundreds of thousands of pounds and not paying a £100ish to check that a rewire costing thousands plus the decorating costs is not needed.

Beware of the report. Some electricians use them to drum up unnecessary work. I recently advised friends that a report a potential buyer had done on their house was a little OTT and the £750 plus vat to fix the problems was not needed. The total cost of repairs that WERE needed to pass a PIR was about £5 parts and I did the work in 1 hour.

Adam

[robert]

Unless you have rewired in the last few years it is highly likely that the report will include a "does not meet current standards" phrase.

Robert Robert

[ARWadsworth]

I have seen houses that were rewired in the last few years and even new builds that "do not meet current standards" and the installers even issued certificates. Bonding seems to be the main failure of the regs.

Adam

[Lobster]

Actually, IMO this is a damned good reason for the seller to choose to commission and pay for the report if he can. If the buyer send in his own guy, the report will undoubtedly come back with lots of stuff included as per para 3 above, which the buyer will then use as a price negotiating tool.

If the seller sends in his own tame sparks, with a clear remit that he's working for the seller and not the buyer, then hopefully the unecessary guff can be omitted (within legal constraints etc obviously). Alternatively, if there was some obvious, easy-to-fix error, you could probably either get the guy to fix it cheapy there and then, or come back tomorrow once you'd d-i-y'ed it, either way issuing a clean report to wow the buyer.

David

[David Hansen]

On 14 Jul 2006 05:18:25 -0700 someone who may be "Richard Grounddiver" wrote this:-

Then they can pay to have one undertaken.

[Guy King]

The message from David Hansen contains these words:

At which point they'll suddenly decide that actually it can't be that bad and do without.

[Steven Briggs]

In message , Guy King writes

Absolutely. If the original poster can tell us the age of the property, when there was last an electrician in the place and general state/age of sockets/switches the collective wisdom of the group can advise the best way to proceed.

[Stephen Dawson]

We are being asked more and ore to do house buyer's inspections. The price we charge is £117.50 for a three bed terrace and then variations upon that. Normally takes to of us about 2-3 hours on site and then 1 hours back in the office. Buyer then gets a periodic inspection report, and if they request it an estimate for the remedial work.95% of properties are not up to scratch but the majority of the have simple faults. Also if we broke wire during testing we would repair the fault at no extra cost to either party.

Regards

Steve Dawson