Advice please

[penlopej]

Following a PIR done on the house I moved into 6 weeks ago, I had most of the essential and recommended work carried out on Friday. The fitted kitchen was installed in August last year and this was one of the reasons I bought the house. I discovered on Friday that all of the appliances have been wired so that they cannot be turned off other than at the (newly fitted on Friday) fuse board. Of more concern to the electrician was the fact that the electric cooker does not have a switch that can be turned off at the wall. (Please excuse my ignorance of the correct terminology.) I feel as though I have an albatross around my neck. I realise that I will have problems in the future when appliances need to be repaired or replaced. I've already had to rip the bottom board away from the washing machine so that I could clean out the filter!!!
Please advise me just how serious it is that there is no available switch for the cooker.
Incidently the company that fitted the kitchen no longer exist!

 

[dingbat]

The regulations require a means of isolation for emergencies, maintenance and functional switching as appropriate. Not having such isolation is not immediately dangerous and may never become so, but you won't find a kosher electrician in the land who would even consider not providing it.

Sadly, you are just another victim of kitchen fitters' wiring. Whenever I see a new kitchen, bathroom, extension or loft conversion I brace myself to find all sorts of non-conformances... I am rarely disappointed.

I bet there's no certificate for the kitchen wiring. I hope you got one for the consumer unit change?

 

[penlopej]

Actually I do have a certificate which may or may not be worth the paper it's written on. Looks very official ...but .... I am getting in touch with Trading Standards tomorrow.

 

[Pensdown]

I would be very interested to see a copy of the certificate.

Is there a logo, NICEIC, ECA or anything like that? If there is you may have a chance to get the work rectified at no cost to you

 

[dingbat]

And very important - was this certificate made available to the electrician who carried out the PIR and did he make any comments about his own test results compared to what was on the cert?

 

[penlopej]

Yes I showed it to him. He didn't seem very impressed and commented that there were readings that he could use for comparison.

 

[penlopej]

For Pensdown
No relevent logo. Tried to check on Yell for the company locally but it doesn't show up. Typed it in on Google and might be possible that I've located the company,based in Folkstone.

 

[HDRW]

For Pensdown
No relevent logo. Tried to check on Yell for the company locally but it doesn't show up. Typed it in on Google and might be possible that I've located the company,based in Folkstone.

This is precisely the situation that Part P was supposed to stop - and it looks like it's not even doing what it was designed to do!

If you can track them down, there's a chance they could be legally liable to sort it out properly.

Cheers,

Howard