Search results

I could well imagine there being cases where a dual-rate meter was installed, but only one of the two registers was being read/billed.

I would expect the electrical distribution industry to have reasonably accurate records of how many dual-rate meters there are, but I could well see records being poor as to which installations had radio teleswitches vs which had traditional time clocks. Given you are going to make a disruptive...

Yeah, easy once you know how but it's not something I've ever seen written down anywhere. My rule of thumb now is slightly beyond the furthest corner of the box.

When instaling sockets there is also an art to getting the right amount of conductor in the boxes. Too long obviously takes up too much space, but too short can often lead to wiring that is very rigid and hard to push back into the box.

No, they can't alter physics. But they can say "anything after the customer's first fuse/breaker is the customer's problem". Whereas if they endorse wiring that is protected only by the service fuse they implicitly take some level of responsibility for that wiring. Though they don't seem to be...

Which brings us back to the whole inconsistent coding thing, according to the electrical safety council guidance non-rcd protected burried cables are "only" a C3, but apparently there is a version of the NAPIT codebreakers book that lists them as C2..........

From a certain perspective the "point" is that it's not notifiable, so someone could replace all the sockets in a property they own without having to get an electrician involved. I could easilly see that making up for the extra £140 or so in parts (20 RCD sockets at £13 each is £260 whereas a CU...

From a certain point of view yes. From another point of view the point of an EICR is to demonstrate that your installation is "satisfactory" for continued rental. If two electricans see the same defect but one codes it as C3 and the other as C2 that can make the difference between a landlord...

Pretty sure the pods have a solid neutral.

I suspect at some point AFDD manufactuers will lobby the IET for their products to be required more widely.

indeed. A domestic electrician is practically required to join one of the "part p" self-certification schemes. Otherwise they would have to deal with building control for every notifiable job, which just isn't very practical. There are about 5 choices for such schemes, with NICEIC being the...

I don't think anything particularly notable has changed in the past 5 years. There is unfortunately there are no hard and fast rules on what installations will pass an EICR, there is lots of guidance from major industry institutions but utlimately it comes down to the proffesional judgement of...

Afaict what the red window *actually* means is that the thermal protection in the surge protector has triggered and disconnected the surge protection element from the electricity system. Surge protectors are designed to absorb short surges, but there is a limit to what they can absorb. If there...

It's very probable that the insiders know more than we do, both about what the standard says, and about how devices actually behave in the real world. But the insiders are also subject to politics, that can sometimes mean pretending things are better (to avoid looking bad to higher ups) or...

Specifically it would seem the biggest concern is that if a system gets stuck in "day" mode then people may lose heating until a new method of switching is fitted.

The problem I find with dates, is it's easy to find documentation on when a standard was written, but much harder to find documentation on when the items covered by that standard became common. BS1363 was introduced in 1947 but I've always got the impression it didn't become "the norm" until...

17.5 megohms is perfectly acceptable, however. It is very much possible for insulation to read ok when tested at the voltages used by a multimeter, but break down when exposed to higher voltage. This is why proffesional insulation testing is done at high voltages. Unfortunately even the...

AIUI it's not that a generator is now classed as a road vehicle, it's that rather than being allowed for any "off-road" use, only certain users are now allowed to use red diesel. Generator hire firms often don't want people using red diesel in their generators because it can cause issues if a...

If you want something a bit neater than just a "hole in the wall", how about a "flex outlet plate".

Maybe you can, but the manufactuers don't seem particuarly interested in helping you do so. There is no standard for multi-row boxes and as I said earlier at least among BGs range it seems their "two row euro" plates seem to be taller than their their "two row grid" plates and shorter than their...