PAT Testing training - how to choose? (2025 Update)

I did a "Theatrical PAT" day about 15 years ago. The important thing is to have a decent meter.

Where are you? I independently did a course in Dartford, Essex - walked it and scored 100% in the exam. Was in search of job opportunities, and quickly decided the life grifting for the rights to disconnect plugs for fragile IT equipment and blowing these up was not for me.

(However, if I wanted to make some money, supplying and calibrating the test equipment, running courses, and writing software for site asset management looks a bit of a wheeze.)

However I now have that PAT ticket, and the current job even sends me on refresher training - a bit unnecessary.

One thing I have noticed with my class colleagues, was a bit of difficulty understanding the concepts of isolation transformers. If I was the lecturer, I would have perhaps done that training a bit slower.

I'm in Ipswich so Dartford isn't so far, how much did it cost (and how long ago)?

That's my feeling entirely, I'm not aiming to make money or even do lots of PAT testing.

I know far too much about isolation transformers already, they are commonly used to reduce galvanic corrosion to steel boats and we have a little steel canal boat. There is much rubbish talked about isolation transformers! :-)

There are/were some online courses. You dont need a qualification, just have to be competent. But organisations , insurers etc like certificates ! I got sent on the C&G course 18 years ago, just did the last day of a 2 day course.Open book exam, 1 hour allowed and myself and 1 other who had serious previous expertise did it in 20 mins even after carefully going through our answers on good exam style. Many of the others struggled to complete in 1 hr. We still got one question wrong. Completely over the top for checking safety of items being sold in a Charity Shop.

You want the C&G 2377 courses/certificates. There are two of them, one for doing the testing, and the other for managing testing, but they're always done together. It is designed to be accessible to non-electricians. Prerequisites would be knowing ohms law and how to wire a plug. (Most of the electricians on the course failed to meet those two.) The course used to run over 2 days, with an exam at the end of each day. C&G 2377 was the only certificate HSE recognised 30 years ago demonstrating competency.

The courses run by the manufacturers of the testers are much more about how to use their tester. Most of PAT testing is nothing to do with using a tester, and most failures are picked up before you ever get to the tester. If you see someone starting a PAT test off by using the tester, they haven't got a clue what they're doing.

Portable appliance testing testing training? Surely either PA test training or PAT training? ;-)

Tim

The hoi polli like some redundancy :-).

"The The many"?

Its 'hoi polloi' ( οἱ πολλοί )

Nothing to do with parrots

-- “I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

― Leo Tolstoy

Bit of gas today? I sympathise.

Oh dear, I have forgotten my PIN number :-)

anyway, it's now called "In-Service Inspection and Testing of Electrical Equipment"

The one for the ATM machine?

Thomas Prufer

I like to use the ATM in the Post Office at Torpenhow Hill

Nick

snipped-for-privacy@news.>>>

:-)

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