B
Big_Spark
Who needs tradesman from hell as a TV show when you can have NICEIC/ECA members from hell!
I was asked to come and look at a Job today as the Electrical Contractor has been thrown off by the builder. I knew it could be bad before going as throwing a contractor off 60% in to a job is pretty damn drastic.
As I was looking round I found..
No provision for Earthing at the main incomer of the flats.
Those that had been second fixed had no grommets in the boxes and no Earth tails linked to the metal boxes.
All the lighting was wired in three core flex (0.75mm2). Apparently it was specified as FP200!!
The Main Intake for the building was a mess, 150mmX100mm trunking over the top of the flat switch fuses, none of it joined together, none of it bolted to the other equipment there. The landlords panel is mounted on a return in the trunking, so they have cut a hole in the lid to get cables into the panel, but stopping you having access to the trunking. It has no grommet strip on the cut-out section, just razor sharp edges!
The spec for the intake was a Panel Board containing 14 100A MCCB's for the flats, 2 of 250A MCCB's for two small retail units, four 400A MCCB's for three large retail units and a car showroom and one 200A MCCB for the landlords panel. The Landlords Panel was supposed to be a Merlin-Gerin 36 way TP+N board, instead it was a Proteus 24 way single phase unit..how they proposed to power the 3 phase kit is a mystery.
The armoured cables that had been installed were undersized, thankfully the ones to the flats were OK, but the ones to the units and the landlords supply tails were very undersized..everything had been fed in 25mm2 4 core SWA..all these need to be pulled out and replaced with the correct SWA!
There is loads of mixed and matched cable tray everywhere, none of it bolted together, it is held together with black cable ties! None of the tray has been levelled and there are sections where they ran out of one size, so used another in the middle. The section that traverses the car park (underground) should actually be 1000mm Ladder Rack, they have installed cable tray and it is a mix of 300, 600 and 750mm widths with the cables simply bundled together!!
I could go on for ages, but I think you get the picture.
This is a shocking state of affairs, needless to say I have agreed to assist the Developer in taking this contractor to court, to that end I have taken some 460 pictures today, some of these will be forwarded in a report to go to the NICEIC and the ECA.
I have seen some bad installs in my time, but it is usually confined to the work of one or two sparks that were not properly supervised within a bigger installation. This was a shambles from the sub basement carpark to the roof 6 floors up!
It just amazes me that contractors feel they can pull this kind of stunt and it will go unoticed!
Needless to say I refused to give a price for the job, and stated we will do it on a daily rate, invoiced Monthly. The work that needs to be done it is impossible to price as we have no idea what other problems may be discovered once the Guys start work tomorrow.
I have had to do a major change around of my Guys so that the best ones go on this job. I had three of them, those that will be there tomorrow, in the office a while ago and told them that this must be a top notch job. We have only ever done bits and pieces for this developer before, but this could well lead to serious contracts being offered to us to tender for, and if we can get them out of the brown stuff on this job without breaking the bank, we may not even need to tender for some.
I was asked to come and look at a Job today as the Electrical Contractor has been thrown off by the builder. I knew it could be bad before going as throwing a contractor off 60% in to a job is pretty damn drastic.
As I was looking round I found..
No provision for Earthing at the main incomer of the flats.
Those that had been second fixed had no grommets in the boxes and no Earth tails linked to the metal boxes.
All the lighting was wired in three core flex (0.75mm2). Apparently it was specified as FP200!!
The Main Intake for the building was a mess, 150mmX100mm trunking over the top of the flat switch fuses, none of it joined together, none of it bolted to the other equipment there. The landlords panel is mounted on a return in the trunking, so they have cut a hole in the lid to get cables into the panel, but stopping you having access to the trunking. It has no grommet strip on the cut-out section, just razor sharp edges!
The spec for the intake was a Panel Board containing 14 100A MCCB's for the flats, 2 of 250A MCCB's for two small retail units, four 400A MCCB's for three large retail units and a car showroom and one 200A MCCB for the landlords panel. The Landlords Panel was supposed to be a Merlin-Gerin 36 way TP+N board, instead it was a Proteus 24 way single phase unit..how they proposed to power the 3 phase kit is a mystery.
The armoured cables that had been installed were undersized, thankfully the ones to the flats were OK, but the ones to the units and the landlords supply tails were very undersized..everything had been fed in 25mm2 4 core SWA..all these need to be pulled out and replaced with the correct SWA!
There is loads of mixed and matched cable tray everywhere, none of it bolted together, it is held together with black cable ties! None of the tray has been levelled and there are sections where they ran out of one size, so used another in the middle. The section that traverses the car park (underground) should actually be 1000mm Ladder Rack, they have installed cable tray and it is a mix of 300, 600 and 750mm widths with the cables simply bundled together!!
I could go on for ages, but I think you get the picture.
This is a shocking state of affairs, needless to say I have agreed to assist the Developer in taking this contractor to court, to that end I have taken some 460 pictures today, some of these will be forwarded in a report to go to the NICEIC and the ECA.
I have seen some bad installs in my time, but it is usually confined to the work of one or two sparks that were not properly supervised within a bigger installation. This was a shambles from the sub basement carpark to the roof 6 floors up!
It just amazes me that contractors feel they can pull this kind of stunt and it will go unoticed!
Needless to say I refused to give a price for the job, and stated we will do it on a daily rate, invoiced Monthly. The work that needs to be done it is impossible to price as we have no idea what other problems may be discovered once the Guys start work tomorrow.
I have had to do a major change around of my Guys so that the best ones go on this job. I had three of them, those that will be there tomorrow, in the office a while ago and told them that this must be a top notch job. We have only ever done bits and pieces for this developer before, but this could well lead to serious contracts being offered to us to tender for, and if we can get them out of the brown stuff on this job without breaking the bank, we may not even need to tender for some.
