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Know of them and how they work. Nothing. Do you really expect something for nothing? The manufacturers will show you how the kettle, fridge etc reduce their consumption by 17% or whatever. They don't show you the kettle taking 17% longer to boil or the fridge having a 17% greater duty...

That's the advantage of a real ring main. Any section between substations on the ring can be isolated. In the good old days every sub and HV consumer was connected to the ring main with a ring main unit, which allows for s section of HV to be isolated without anyone losing power. Nowadays I...

You really must involve Building Control. The whole objective of their involvement in controlling electrical installations is to avoid horrors such as this. A Building Control involvement would kill any case he tries to make. If Building Control won't do anything about this woeful...

Many a time and oft I have been berated for adopting a Gallic attitude to the Part P rules. The French wouldn't put up with the inconsistencies. For example: I would say that you should (under the rules) install a lighting point, then replace it with your ceiling fan under Schedule 4 1.(a). Of...

Paradise! When I passed through jointers' training school at Ilkeston in the early 1960's there were no plastic cables. All PILC. So we were trained to wipe lead joints too. :mrgreen:

That's a pretty big station. At £3,000 per kW, you'd get a 9GW nuclear station for that money (Sizewell B is 1.2GW). Nuclear can generate for 8,500 hours a year, so this station could generate 80TWh a year. At 2.25kW per house, say, that's a total of 4.5GW. For generation of 1,500kWh per year...

He's not proposing to work on the lights. If he's not doing any work on the lights, there's nothing to notify. Anyway, outside lights are not notifiable if they are attached to the outside wall of a house.

If you want a really good looking installation, then it has to be pyro. Pyro cables are a lot smaller than plastic insulated cables; a ring circuit for example needs 1.5mm² instead of 2.5mm². You can choose plastic covered pyro or bare (copper) pyro. You can even polish the bare copper...

If it peels, it will do so in bits. You'll need a blowlamp to get the bits that stick off. You could start investigating blowlamps now... :lol:

525.1/2 in BS7671 set the minimum voltage required by equipment. The requirement is deemed to be met by complying with the voltage drops allowed by Appendix 12. These voltage drops have necessarily been set to cater for the worst case supply at times of peak demand, i.e. the general case...

Better to keep T&E out of attics then? Attics should fall below ambient air temperature during cloudless winter nights if they are insulated to current building regulations. Radiation from roofs to space can exceed the convection from ambient air. The surface temperature than falls below...

Really? If he connects to an existing lighting circuit at the mcb, and the CU is not in a kitchen/special location, I don't think he needs to notify. I can't find anything that even BAS could construe makes such work in a CU notifiable.

Depends on the sort of project manager you choose. You can choose by asking for tenders to build your house according to the architect's specification. You'll get a fixed price and the PM will build at the minimum cost possible within the specification. That's the cheapest way. But you have...

The colour rendering index is buried well down the Philips catalogue. For LED lamps, the CRI is 80. That's the minimum. European standard EN12464-1 says that lamps with a CRI of below 80 are not to be used where people work or stay for lengthy periods.

Do not for one minute think that the cost of pv panels is falling 30% in 6 months. This cost reduction is a consequence of increasing competition among installers, as more electricians obtain the necessary certification to install pv. The profitability of pv was shown on Dragons' Den where an...

It would be more correct to say we can't put a stop to the sales of dodgy items.

Yes. The context was of current transformers. Apart from the primary/secondary current ratio and the maximum secondary current, I might want to know the secondary voltage when supplying the rated current and the maximum voltage that the primary is insulated for. Interpreting the 5kV as the...

An absolutely worthless warranty other than for one or two odd faulty panels. Who knows what the performance of the panels will be in 25 years time? The type currently being installed have not been in production for 5 years let alone 25. If most fail the warranty, the company supporting the...

If we are to count the interest that can be earned by investing PV income, we must also charge the cost of income lost from the capital required to finance the PV. Here's flameport's table with credits for income and charges for lost income. With a 25 year investment it should be expected...