DANGER OF THE WEEK AWARD

Bad Electricians…

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The home owner told me that the electrician who did this work was recommended by the builder who was adding a conservatory. An electrician he may have been but his work was sloppy and unsafe. This guy just didn’t care about the safety of the home owners and their children.

We’ve been in the house to refurbish a bathroom. In the refurbishment plans we were asked to change the lighting and add an extractor unit. In order to do the electrical work under (BS7671:2008 (17th edition) we must have RCD protection to the light circuit. When we opened the two year old consumer unit we found countless issues. It’s was not just sloppy work but it’s unsafe too. The kitchen and downstairs bathroom light circuits were not RCD protected nor were they properly earthed to 16th or 17th edition. The upstairs bathroom light put in at the same time as the CU was not earthed correctly but even if it had been it so happened that the earth connection at the consumer unit wasn’t screwed in place and was hanging loose! The list goes on and on. Beyond the fact that cables were stripped to far back leaving live wires protruding, earth cables were not pushed in far enough to be screwed down tightly, some of the earth screws were loose or not hooked up at all as mentioned above. The meter tails weren’t stripped or taped to show colour coding. In general it’s was sloppy work and that work shows throughout the rest of the home were the same electrician was completing work for the home owner.

To replace a consumer unit the electrician takes responsibility for the wiring in the whole house. It’s a big responsibility that the home owner should be aware of. If problems are found as is often the case the problems MUST be put right. If circuits have faults they cannot be safely hooked back up. Without going in to great detail all light switches, light fittings, sockets and placement should be checked, all earth bonding MUST be brought up to current specifications, all colour coding (brown and blue sleeving) should be corrected and all circuits must be correctly fused/RCDed to today’s regulations. Safety and warning decals must be fitted and of course all test results are to be recorded and a copy left with the home owner. Things will generally happen in the following order: electricity off at the mains, check all original labels and then inspect, test and record the results for all circuits, repairs if required somewhere in between these steps, install and then connect up new consumer unit, check all work visually, turn power back on, test and record the results for each circuit. In contrast (and we’ve heard this story more times than Carter has liver pills) the electrician who installed this consumer unit, may or may not have checked his work, didn’t record any results and THEN told the client he would be back in a few days to test everything and just like Keyser Söze he disappeared.

It is difficult to test your own work; I know. As one NIC EIC inspector told me, “you have to step back from the work you just finished and look at it with a different eye.” It is difficult. The inspection and testing are so important to making sure that something wasn’t missed or in the case of a consumer unit swap that something unseen and lurking from years earlier wasn’t missed. Had this job been inspected the missing earth connector at the consumer unit would have been seen and the kitchen circuits would have been safer. Had the job been tested the missing earth to the kitchen would have shown up when trying to get one of several readings. This bloke missed finding the problem on three separate occasions! There is just no excuse.

Sloppy work, sloppy work and more sloppy work. Protect yourself. Always ask for credentials (NIC EIC, ECA) and make sure the electrician is Part-P Registered. Don’t take the word of your builder or your mate. Check your electrician out on the web. It’ll take you less than five minutes. If he’s not listed find one that is and use them instead. It’s your house, it’s your life, it’s your children’s lives; protect them.

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