I rent a very old cottage out to a sitting tenant and when I first bought it 10 years ago I had a complete rewire new fuse board and wired in smoke detectors installed. I'm now looking at getting the EIRC done. However the plastic fuse board is in my tenants bedroom. Is this likely to fail - either due to the situation or fact it's plastic can anyone tell me please? Obviously if it needs changing it will be asap
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I had an EICR on a property with the fuse board in the 2nd bedroom - it passed. I think your plastic fuse board/consumer unit would be an advisory, rather than a fail. -
Thanks for that. once I've had the report done I will update the result. fingers crossed it's okComment
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I am a landlord and electrician, I can assure you that will not be an issue..Comment
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Ditto.
If the EICR says differently then come back and update us because it will be interesting to hear why it's a C2
But loads of so called sparks have no idea!Comment
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I have had to get multiple EICRs done over the last few weeks - in London I had to pay for a metal fusebox or it was a fail (cost of £598 each). Meanwhile in Bournemouth got loads done with plastic boxes and that was a C3 (advisory). Having read the guidelines and they are ambiguous to say the least. Who sets the rules on this stuff? They need sacking.
Freedom at the point of zero............Comment
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a plastic fuseboard is a C3 or not even a comment
Read this
https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.or...149/bpg4-1.pdf
As for sacking the people that write the rules - not sacking, that would be too good - shot would be more sensible.Comment
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I called one sparky yesterday who told me that a plastic fuse box will fail and he would replace it there and then at a cost of £340 plus vat....I think not...called another electrician who scoffed at these comments and said it wouldn't fail just because it was plastic and there would have to be some other reason. seems to me this EICR process is as hit and miss as getting your vehicle mot'd! Correct me if I'm wrong!Comment
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Well, it wouldn't be if sparks didn't use the EICR process to drum up workOriginally posted by Gunsho View Post
The rental property legislation says that properties should be inspected to the 18th Edition of BS 7671 - now that means inspect to but this also means that over 95% of the housing stock would fail if applied to the letter and I'm 99.99999% sure this isn't what they meant, so what in reality this means is that code C3 should be used for lots of items that were installed to earlier editions
Blame the people that wrote the legislation (the Chair of the committee was Emma Clancy who used to be the CEO of Certsure (NICEIC/Elecsa ) and she should have known better - or did they do this deliberately?
All the UK's building regulations and rules are very poorly written and sadly this legislation follows suit
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EICR's are a great way for scamming electricians to drum up work. At least electrical work is usually measured in the hundreds and not thousands, Imagine if we had mandatory roofing inspections and what roofers would come up with!!!
Doesn't help that part p has brought in shedloads of very underqualified domestic installers, many of whom can't carry out decent new installation work, never mind inspect old installations correctly.Comment
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for us it has been the opportunity to upgrade a lot of halogen dichroic lighting to LED for better epc scores as well as improved fire risk as most recessed lighting was put in without firehatsComment
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Whilst there may be some electricians using the requirement to drum up business, many are busy enough not to need to!
In turn, there are many LLs (and homeowners) who have never had their electrical installation inspected and should not be surprised when one turns up a good deal of upgrading!
Roofing is an interesting point - my son has a Homebuyers survey recently which suggested roofs should be inspected annually (!) - who looks at a roof until it leaks? I have a roof where we have been chasing a leak for aa couple of years and the final bill will be £1500 to remove most of the chimney - having seen the pictures of the pointing I am not surprised it is leaking and can only imagine no-one has looked at it properly for years!Comment
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The problem comes is if the upgrading isn't required but just recommended, the 'drum uppers' will not make this distinction. All they have to do is write C2 instead of C3 and suddenly they have a nice little earner off the back of their 'loss leader' cheap EICR.Comment
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Landlords need to download a copy of the electrical safety council best practice guide No 4 issue 5Originally posted by andybenw View Post
AND then challenge the codesComment
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Originally posted by andybenw View Post
Totally agree although I would say a lot of landlords are bringing it on themselves, they are choosing companies that are charging circa £80 for about 5hrs worth of work, after all the normal business costs thats less than £10 an hour. The average for an electrician is £30-£40 per hour. Is it really any surprise that those sort of electricians charging those rates are finding extra work that you need to pay for?
The real question is do you trust someone like that to replace a consumer unit? A good plastic consumer unit installed by a competent electrician is much better than some cheap screwfix metal consumer unit thrown in as fast as possible by a domestic installer.
Always go for an electrician that is a fully qualified electrician rather than a domestic installer, the difference is a fully qualified will have taken at least 2yrs and a shed load of assessments to be fully qualified, the domestic installer will have gone on a 3-5week course.
https://www.electricalcompetentperson.co.uk/
I recommend going to electricalcompetentperson.co.uk and choose an electrician that has been assessed to do EICR's
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