What do I want?

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Hi,

I'm looking for an electrician to do some sort of survey on a house I bought recently, but I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for. To save me having the same conversation over and over, could you let me know if there's a standard name for what I need, please?

The house is reasonably large and a couple of hundred years old, with the electrics likely having been redone in the 70s as there was a major renovation about that time. We've got one of those old rotating dial electricity meters, but we do have a consumer unit with an RCD rather than old fuse wiring, if it helps date the vintage.

There is some evidence of wiring that I believe is totally redundant now - we've got a bit of T&E hanging out of an exterior wall in one place (literally just dangling) and on the other side of the house we've got some old exterior lights that long since rusted and full of water and as far as I'm aware, disconnected.

There are three supplementary consumer units, one in a utility room, one in the attic for the electrics up there and one in a connected outbuilding. The outbuilding seems to be connected by some twin and earth tacked to the wall rather than any conduit or SWA cable. I have noticed that one of the bathroom extractors uses a bit of green and yellow cable with a brown sleeve as it's switched live, and as far as I'm aware that's not allowed so I don't know if that indicates there's some amateur work in there.

We have an issue with the main RCD tripping periodically, so I suspect it's either knackered or there are some minor issues somewhere. From the bits of wiring that I've come across (and from my position as a non-electrician) I've not seen anything that looks totally ridiculous, just maybe dancing around the edge of the rules.

The main thing is to make that everything is safe and find whatever's causing the trips but I'm a bit of a data hoarder and we're planning to be in this property for good, so if there's a level of survey that involves mapping out how things are connected together I'd be interested in having that for reference.

I'm aware of EICR reports, but I'm not sure how far they go. Is that what I want? Is there a name for what I want? ;)

Thanks!
 
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An EICR goes as far as you ask the inspector to go, as standard they look at safety, but for example when the LABC ask for one after some new installation then looking as compliance to latest edition of BS 7671, but that is well over what is required to ensure safety.

This has been the whole problem when using an EICR for rented property, there is no standard, it is down to the inspector. It is a report, there should be no pass or fail, the coding is to help you work out urgency for any work, although for rental C1, C2, and FI are considered fails, that was not the idea of the coding.

The inspection can take 1 to 10 hours depending on how far they go, in the main electricians consider one a day as clearly anything dangerous needs fixing before leaving, so can't really have a fixed finish time, so you need to trust the electrician doing the work, it is no good going by price, not the type of job you can ask for a quote with.
 
Thanks. Just to clarify, it's not that I want to go shopping around for the cheapest quote for a standard service so much, it's more that I didn't know if there was a standard name for this sort of thing so that the electricians I approach know what it is I'm asking for.

This house is my house so it's not just a tick-box landlord exercise, I do want a thorough, quality job done.
 
.... The main thing is to make that everything is safe and find whatever's causing the trips but I'm a bit of a data hoarder and we're planning to be in this property for good, so if there's a level of survey that involves mapping out how things are connected together I'd be interested in having that for reference. .... I'm aware of EICR reports, but I'm not sure how far they go. Is that what I want? Is there a name for what I want? ;)
Thanks. Just to clarify, it's not that I want to go shopping around for the cheapest quote for a standard service so much, it's more that I didn't know if there was a standard name for this sort of thing so that the electricians I approach know what it is I'm asking for. This house is my house so it's not just a tick-box landlord exercise, I do want a thorough, quality job done.
An EICR is definitely what you want/need - indeed, there isn't really any other sort of formalised inspection available.

However, as eric has said, you are free to discuss the scope of an EICR with the electrician you commission to do it but I would suspect that, at least in the first instance, what you would want would be a 'standard' one. That essentially involves inspection of everything visible and testing of everything testable. The only senses in which it is less than 'full' is that it would not normally (unless you asked for it) involving such things as lifting floorboards to examine 'hidden' wiring etc., and would commonly only involve removal of a proportion (maybe 20%) of sockets, light switches etc. (to see what's going on behind them).

As for "a level of survey that involves mapping out how things are connected together", that would not be part of a normal EICR. However, if you wanted it, you could certainly ask an electrician to do it, but it might involve a significant amount of extra time/money. Whilst future electricians would undoubtedly be 'grateful', it is rare to have such 'wiring diagrams'/whatever for domestic properties, so it may not be something that is worth sp[ending your money on. As for ...

... This house is my house so it's not just a tick-box landlord exercise, I do want a thorough, quality job done.
That is the crucial thing. You need to somehow find an electrician who you really can 'trust', and it's far from easy to do that - it is often said that 'personal recommendations' are the best.

The recent legislation concerning rental properties seems to be resulting in all sorts of problems with EICRs, a good few of them are seemingly 'less than satisfactory'. You should be suspicious of anyone who says that they can do an EICR 'in an hour', or anything like that!

It certainly seems that some are using EICRs as a means of generating ('unnecessary') work for themselves, so you might consider telling someone doing an EICR that you would probably not be asking them to undertake any subsequent work identified as being necessary by the EICR unless/until you had obtained a 'second opinion'. Whilst that runs the risk of 'undermining trust' to some extent, I think that any decent and competent electrician would understand that to be a reasonable approach from your point of view.

Kind REgards, John
 
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Thanks, that’s a really useful viewpoint. I’ll try and identify a trustworthy operator and go from there.
 

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