[OT] Universities and PAT certificates

[Graham.]

Both. I put PAT stickers on all my sons stuff, but it appeared to be a "lip-service" exercise, with no one reporting that anyone was actually checking. YMMV.

[Graeme]

More a whinge than a question, really. Son is off to uni soon, student accommodation (Scotland) and one of the requirements is PAT certification for anything over one year old. Phoned the office who confirmed sight of receipt required as proof of age of anything claimed to be less than a year old. Rule applies to anything that plugs into the wall, including mobile phone chargers. Is this usual, or OTT?

[Bob Eager]

OTT but seems to be increasingly common.

[Graeme]

The thought had crossed my mind :-)

[Martin Brown]

Seems a bit OTT for things that are double insulated. It has become increasingly common - duty of care to other students etc.

In my day it was the other way around. I found the anglepoise desk lamp that came with my university room had a live chassis the wires having frayed and the earth had been disconnected to stop it blowing fuses.

Luckily I had my trusty neon screwdriver (now deprecated) to hand.

[spuorgelgoog]

I think now usual, given the problems with fake chargers catching fire and overseas students bringing dodgy cooking appliances and adapters in.

"I never PAT tested mine. Just buy the stickers and and sign a random name on it. They never checked mine. "

Owain

[Andy Burns]

Buy a 10-way extension lead, and keep the receipt for it :-P

[charles]

It's becoming normal, but with good reason. Many domestic items are unsafe and where do you draw the line? Certainly, I've condemned many an extension lead. Even phone chargers with cracked cases - after a "fall".

[newshound]

I'm surprised that there isn't a thriving market for PAT stickers. Rather like the "Age-check" cards that my youngest had at Uni.

[charles]

Some places want to see the certificate. You can buy stickers on eBay.

[Brian Reay]

None of the halls of residence our three stayed in initially required them.

[Jeff Layman]

Not by all, it would appear:

[spuorgelgoog]

Can't you buy the certificates on Ebay too?

Oh yes. Or print your own

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

The key here is that if everything catches fire and students die, they are no longer liable. And their indsurance is valid.

If it can be proved from the charred wrecakghe that your pat sticker was forged, you are.

Unless you swear blind you bought it from china like that.

In short by signing a PAT sticker you are legally relieving them of a duty of care and validating their insurance.

THEY dont care about anything beyond that. ....

[nightjar]

I used to buy them from RS Components, but I do have the appropriate equipment and did the portable and fixed appliance testing for my factories myself. I did, however, have a factory inspector claim that a two ton lathe, which was plugged into a BS4343 32 amp 3 phase socket, was a portable appliance, rather than a fixed appliance.

[news19k]

In my experience of university/research institutions, in offices they come around once a year and expect to PAT test any and all electricals found. I've never known them to expect PAT testing up front, which would be a policy that would be hard to get people to manage the enthusiasm for complying with it, especially for random charging bricks and the like.

Perhaps in student halls they might want to be more stringent; this could make sense in high occupancy buildings, and given the possibly not entirely responsible behaviour of some students. However, if so I'd assume (although I do not know) that the uni would (insist on) doing the PAT testing themselves, for free.

#Paul

[Brian Gaff]

Well, I think because mobile phone chargers have such a bad name for bursting into flames. They are not made well and people buy them from who knows where with fake iec marks on them. Brian

[mechanic]

Good luck explaining that to a coroner.

[The Natural Philosopher]

"I dunno mate, I bought em off ebay with stickers on em already"

[whisky-dave]

Both.

It's an even bigger problem for us in the labs as we are meant to make sure everything is safe. Studetns turn up with their laptops, phones + other things every day, 2 or more times a day and we have no way of checking reciepts and whether they are valid or real, and even then the liklihood of a studetn turning up with a reciept ? when they can't even remmeber to bring pen and paper is small so what do I do...they do say it's one of my responsibilities, so if I see a product that looks dangerous (and all 2 pin adapters are NOT to be used even if bought 5 mins ago) I tell the students to stop using them or I'll report them, although I'm not sure who to. Plus seeing such items was easy in the old lab but the new one all the sockets are recessed and behind the benches so you can't see any adapters.

We have an even bigger problem with our own equipment, all I can do is remove/repair anything I think will fail such a PAT test. But 1000s of items are more than a year old, our scopes are 4-6 years old.

Years ago one of the technicains was given the job of PAT testing for the department he was allocated about 1-2 days per week. If any student wanted to bring a laptop or any device in (even if less than a year old) they would need to bring it to the lab on a particular day and we'd arrange for the technicain to PAT test items in the lab at that date and time.

He'd stick one of these magic pass stickers on which we all know can't be faked or moved or falsified ;-)

I even saw a student take one off a piece of our equipment and stick it onto his charger.

You can get very simple PAT testers that would be OK for testing 'normal' type mains equipment and they could/should employ someone either as a college tester or each department should have such a person, but the college seem to prefer an outside company.

Coincedently our ex PAT tester visited me yesterday as he retired ~6 years ago he came back to visit ex collegues most have left and been replaced by admin staff.