This is a question asked recently on another group:
"I have recently taken a 5A switched spur off of a single outlet in the back bedroom of my house to serve an outside light. I have used 2.5mm T&E for this. The light works, and the socket still works, however, if I plug a "protector" plug in with a 4-way extension lead into the socket, the protector trips immediately. This was not happening before. The existing socket was either part of a ring, or radial circuit as it had 2 cables going into it. The fuse at the CU end is a 15A and as far as I can tell, the only sockets on this circuit are 2 x doubles + said single outlet."
"All advice appreciated."
And you wonder why Part P is being implemented. :-))
But people are now telling me that electrical fires aren't an issue but, with all I see and hear around me, I think they most definitely are now. And they're on the increase.
It's not to save people, it's to maintain the timetable. False positives don't matter - who cares if the odd piece of self-loading cargo is dragged off for a nice cup of tea with the BTP.
Looking at some of the postings just in this group, I can see some electrical questions and proposals that frighten me. These are normally about wiring problems and/or schemes which people are doing or have actually done. So I think the momentary increase in 1995 is about to happen again. That maybe why the government and institutions are doing something now to cover their own butts.
The new requirements will go a long way to covering the asses of the insurance companies when and if policy pay outs should be due, and also the electrical suppliers when and if things go wrong in the DIY electrical installations they attend with the fire brigade.
The postings here are from people who are actually trying to find out the best and safest ways to do the job. But just how many more aren't even bothering to find out how and why it should be done, and are burning their houses down?
Surely legislation should be on the basis of evidence of a rising problem or on matters of important public policy, not an ever-more-complex rule book based upon possibilities that might be forseen but for which no evidence exists?
To put the scale of the problem into some kind of perspective, a conversation that I recently had with a senior manager in a very well known insurance company was quite enlightening.
Apparently, your house is likely, on average, to be so seriously damaged in an accident that it requires major rebuilding once every _300_ years. (interestingly, for thatched houses this figure is closer to once every 1000 years). I think that as he was making the point about people reducing their risk when aware of obvious dangers (barbeques/bonfires near the house) then this might have just related to fires, but I'm not certain of this.
So, I don't think that the major insurers are losing too much sleep over the dangers of unqualified (sorry, should read Unregistered) people doing domestic wiring.
Even from the government figures, the numbers of people fatally injured in electrical fires and from electrocution from fixed wiring is miniscule in a country of 60million plus people.
This is completely unjustified beaurocratic overkill.
What is happening is that it is getting ever more complex and less rewarding to run a small business these days. Ultimatly in a country where the majority of its GDP is generated by this business sector, it is tantamount to cooking the goose that used to lay the golden eggs.
Life is all about risks and managing them. Do you make use of roads (as a vehicle user or a pedestrian)? Some 3500 people who do are killed per year in accidents, so compared to the 5-10 people killed by faulty wiring, you are 500 times more likely to be killed as a road user than you are by faulty wiring, so you better stay at home all the time then. Oh, hang on, something around this same 3500 figure are killed by other accidents in the home, so staying at home is also looking about 500 times more dangerous than faulty wiring alone, so scratch that idea. Perhaps you should go and stay in hospital, so you're near to medical help when you have an accident as life is beginning to look rather dangerous? Oh, something like this same 3500 figure is the number of deaths in hospital due to picking up secondary infections such as MRSA, so hospitals are looking like a mighty dangerous place to stay too.
So to put this into perspective, you are so much more likely to die from some other accidental or negligent cause, that the
5-10 deaths per year due to electrical installation faults are completely off the radar. If you want to campaign to reduce accidental deaths of some type, at least pick one which is significant. Electrical installation deaths is completely insignificant.
So instead of tackling some cause of accidental deaths which might actually make an impact, the government has spent all this money, resource, and time on something which is insignificant. The government estimates that part P will reduce the number of deaths due to electrical installations by only 20% -- that's just 1 or 2 people per year. The three categories of accidental deaths I list above account for over 10,000 deaths per year. Spending the time on reducing that by even as little as 1% would save 50 to 100 times more lives per year than the Part P farce. Does this help make it clearer why Part P is completely bogus?
Wrong. Lots of people DIY wrongly and very very few of them die. There are going to be lots of faulty electrical installations around for lots of reasons (DIY being only one of many), but they very rarely kill anyone. Chances are far more DIYers are killed actually en route to or from B&Q than are ever killed by their own DIY work.
I hope this puts the figures into more perspective.
But the knock on effects are going to reduce some of the other deaths caused in the home, wouldn't you think? Such as deaths caused by electrocution from the actual appliances. Electrical appliances causing fires. Etc. Etc. So it will make a difference if it actually gets the proper backing from the regulators, and if it is enforced and not just passed over with an inadequate testing systems and notary records. With these in place, it will work out as a change for the good.
No it doesn't and that's part of the issue. In many sets of figures, the appliance and use related figures are the ones highlighted and part P does less than zero to address the issue.
The reasons are simple. If people have faulty appliances they will be faulty appliances - no change there. Flexible cords will still be damaged - not covered by this. People will continue to use adaptors and trailing multiways and more so now rather than fork over more money to get somebody in. So now you have fire and trip hazards even worse than before. Not addressed, but made more likely to happen.
As constructed it doesn't. What do we have?
- Approach 1 is that electrician who is member of an approved organisation comes in and does the work and then signs it off. There is perhaps a 1-2% rate of checking of his work. Where's the supervision in that?
- Approach 2 is that conscientious householder DIYs or AN Other does the work and a building notice is done and the work is inspected. This is closer to being useful, but a costly option to achieve very little.
"Andy Hall" wrote | If people have faulty appliances they will be faulty appliances | - no change there. Flexible cords will still be damaged - not | covered by this. People will continue to use adaptors and | trailing multiways and more so now rather than fork over more | money to get somebody in.
And how many people's lives have been saved because Granny got a handy neighbour in to change a socket for her because the switch was too stiff for her arthritic fingers, and it was gently pointed out to her that her 1930s bowl fire with the 2-core cotton lead was a deathtrap and the whole house needed rewiring.
So people who commit gross bodgery are suddenly going to do official paperwork as well ? That's the fallacy of Part P.
Friend of mine has some 3 way switching that only comes on in certain combinations. Even sitting down with pencil and paper I can't work out just how it could have been wired to do what it does (switching the hall lights kills them in the kitchen). Professional work though, just before the previous owners sold the house.
Columnist talks about regulations being invoked for a broken window when Document L does not apply in the case of "like for like", even where it involves the whole unit.
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say 'typical', because they ran a story earlier in the year about some nuns who were 'threatened with bankruptcy ' to make disabled access to their crypt under the DDA; which is complete tosh of course - the DDA only requires 'reasonable alterations' to be made.
There may be problems with Document L and Part P, but the Telegraph does nobody any favours by putting such a stupidly framed argument against them.
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