I want to train to rewiring an old house

Hi Guys,

I'm looking at using up some of my holidays and have just purchased a 1915 house. I've been an electricians assistant years ago and have a basic understanding of electrical work but I would like to take a course and get acreddited to re-wire the house.

I was going to try to find an electrician to work with at stages through project. I was thinking about running all the cables, connecting circuits and have a staged insepections from the electrician.

Am I being mad doing this or what would you recommend?

Many Thanks
Mark

Have a look on YouTube. N bundy electrical.

you could you the labour and running of cables

As a project may be interesting, but will likely cost more than getting some one who is a scheme member.

To rewire first step is to inform LABC and cost is down to what they require.

I found the LABC inspector can be very helpful, but also can require so much inspection and testing it really gets silly.

If you read BS7671 you quickly realise it is an English exercise rather than electrical, and electrician has to decide what is senseable. And of course this means an inspector can always find fault, and you need to be able to argue to show it is not.

So when I came to wire mothers wet room, the question put to the LACB inspector was if the inspector he employs says diffrent to myself, which would he take as correct? To over ride my decision the inspector he employed would need to be higher qualified than myself, so would need to have a degree.

The LABC inspector saw my point, and decided I could sign the installation certificate.

So unless you can sign the installation certificate then an inspector can have you redo your work many times, one would hope not, but it is his wim.

ericmark said:

As a project may be interesting, but will likely cost more than getting some one who is a scheme member.

To rewire first step is to inform LABC and cost is down to what they require.

I found the LABC inspector can be very helpful, but also can require so much inspection and testing it really gets silly.

If you read BS7671 you quickly realise it is an English exercise rather than electrical, and electrician has to decide what is senseable. And of course this means an inspector can always find fault, and you need to be able to argue to show it is not.

So when I came to wire mothers wet room, the question put to the LACB inspector was if the inspector he employs says diffrent to myself, which would he take as correct? To over ride my decision the inspector he employed would need to be higher qualified than myself, so would need to have a degree.

The LABC inspector saw my point, and decided I could sign the installation certificate.

So unless you can sign the installation certificate then an inspector can have you redo your work many times, one would hope not, but it is his wim.

Click to expand...

Why?

If you are:

replacing a consumer unit,
installing a new circuit, or
making additions or alterations within the zones of a bathroom etc.
(a lot more in Wales)

legally the work must be notified to the Local Authority.

Unless you are or use a registered electrician, this will incur a fee (which varies with different LAs ~£200 to £400) and must be done before you start the work.

As you are not a registered electrician they might not deem you competent enough to do the work.
Training to be an electrician and becoming registered will obviously be a lot more expensive.

I would suggest, if the work is notifiable, you employ a registered electrician to supervise you throughout the work and then he can notify the LA, for a very small fee, after the work is completed.

I would suggest you try to find an easy going electrician, who would not mind having a free labourer on site.
I hope you have quite some holidays to come...

The electrician would give you very defined jobs, to the specification you have agreed on, designed by them.
He would then come back and check what you have done.
Get all the chasing done. Then start to run cable under supervision.
The electrician would check first fix (They would ultimately be responsible and will be notifying and certifying)

As second fix starts the electrician would need to be more hands on, and make sure everything is installed and terminated correctly.
The board would be down to them.
Problem could be finding an Electrician. I suspect the charge would be not far off the cost, if he did the whole thing himself.
I really depends on how handy you are ?

Some interesting stuff on youtube, but thats more for 'entertainment' A few do actually try to educate though

I am a commercial electrician, as such I tried to wire my mothers wet room, following all the rules as social services involved, in Wales so can't use another electrician to sign off work, only the LABC route is open to me.

The LABC however can delegate the work of inspecting to an electrical firm, and you the owner have to pay for that inspection on top of the LABC fee which in Wales is £100 plus vat for first £2000 worth of work. So minimum cost to do notifiable work is around £200.

If you look at new English landlord laws and the EICR you will see a huge difference in the standards expected by different electricians doing the inspection, and the rules and laws are not all electrical. HSE, and building regulations stipulate distance from corners, socket heights, and many other requirements, and some are to be frank daft.

So if some thing needs to be viewed then max and min height, but if it needs manual operation also max and min height, so the height of a thermostat is fixed at 1400 mm, but you can still mount it on the end of a radiator, which is clearly too low for regulations, one hopes common sense will prevail, and I am sure with the radiator TRV head it would, but your at the whim of the inspector, it is not so much right and wrong, but 50 shades of grey, and it is likely you will need to redo some items.

It is not the redoing which is a problem, it is the charge for another inspection after the changes, and the time it takes, each time you do something the LABC has 14 days to inspect, unlikely to take 14 days, but it means multiple breaks in the rewire waiting for permission to continue, and you need permission to turn on power, which is a big problem if also living in the house.

As I say your at the whim of the inspector, he may permit you to power up before inspection, but in real terms it can cost more to DIY a rewire than to use a scheme member to do it.

So when it came to do a full re-wire of mothers house, I used a scheme member firm, OK there was a time constraint. It was costing £650 per week to have mother in a care home while house was rewired, so speed was important. I had a basic re-wire, all sockets to be on a ring final, so I could add spurs latter, and the kitchen and wet room had already been rewired, so seem to remember around £3000 of which at least £1000 is materials, so labour £2000 and there were between two and six men on the job and was completed within a week.

Had I done it, looking at more like six weeks, hard to pull cables on your own.

So have not talked about training, as I already had the qualifications, it is the getting of each section signed off by LABC. To become a scheme member you need to do a couple of rewires and have them inspected, so for one house, that's a non starter. It is not a case of do the course take an exam and start rewiring as a scheme member.

If the rewire is part of a larger project then using the LABC may be an option, but in the main it's a non starter.