Heaters - spur or separate circuit?

[rebuke]

True - in this situation I suspect the OP would do a perfectly good job (and agreed about some work by DIs being far worse than DIY etc!).

Unfortunately though, the building regs don't allow for this at the moment. What I would personally like to see happen, is some combination of the following:

* New lower notification fee when a qualified spark (who is not a member of a Part P scheme) is doing the work, i.e. will just send in EIC/MWC with some proof of credentials - say £25 or so...

* Lower the minimum notification fee for DIYers - e.g. if I'm just adding an extra socket to a ring in my kitchen say, the time required to inspect and test that alteration is going to be minimal - £100+ just to do that seems stupid.

However, I'm probably better of hoping to win the lottery, as the above suggestions are probably far too sensible for the government to implement...

 

[chapeau]

Unfortunately though, the building regs don't allow for this at the moment.

Is that where the blame lies? I would need to trawl through all the regulations, but I seem to remember that it's the self certificating bodies (NICEIC etc) which decide what they will accept and therefore notify to LABC. LABC uses this as sufficient evidence that Part P of the building regs has been complied with. All the building regs requires is the 'reasonable provision in design and installation' stuff.

What would make eminent sense is that if the NICEIC etc member electrician decides that the installation is safe (which is what we want) and 'reasonable provision' has been made, he signs the forms. He can very easily in many cases assess whether this has been done by questioning the DIYer and looking at his work. He certainly doesn't in all cases need to design it himself, or decide where the chases are, or decide whether its 2.5mm t/e or 1.5mm t/e, in advance.

However, the whole self certification apparatus is a job creation and job guarantee setup, so there would appear to be little chance of this happening.

 

[rebuke]

I'm not sure, it might be the scheme providers or the regs - would have to check myself to be sure.

I can understand the scheme providers not wanting to go down that route though, ignoring any arguments about job creation/guarantee - imagine the following situation:

DIYer installs some new circuit
Spark signs off on it
Some years pass, house gets sold etc
New homeowner tries to put something up on the wall, hammers nail in to wall and hits cable outside of safe zone - electrocutes themselves and dies.

Now, while most of the responsiblity here would be with the spark who signed it off, the scheme provider would share a small amount of it, which is something they would want to avoid, so in that sense there's nothing in it for them to allow this.

(Yes I know, any unprotected cable like that would have to have an RCD on it under 17th, and spark should have ensured that, so the chance of someone actually dieing is fairly low, but still...)

 

[chapeau]

I cannot see why they would be held responsible any more than they are today. They inspect and educate their self employed members and could argue they do all is reasonably possible to keep them in line. Any electrician worth his salt could very quickly assertain whether an existing installation in a shed was safe and should be able to certify that and that certification ultimately be accepted by LABC.

 

[ColJack]

going on your scenario rebuke....

guy puts in 3 new sockets in the kitchen on the downstairs ring..
the LABC comes and sees the socket runs and ok's them, they later come back and test and issue the certificate..

6 years pass and the house has changed hands.. the new owner hangs a picture in the living room and nails straight through a T+E cable outside the zone, clipping the live only as he does.. and gets a shock..

who's to blame then?
the LABC issued a certificate to say that the circuit was ok and installed correctly?

 

[RF Lighting]

Surely that is no different to you signing off a minor works addition.

You are only signing to say your addition is compliant with the regs. There is no way you could ever say for sure the rest of the installation does, short of rewiring it all.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

which means that a "firm" can't be part P registered, each individual sparky would have to be... they can't sign for work done that they didn't do themselves..?

But a firm can be registered.

Companies are legal entities, and with supervisors, labourers, apprentices etc, it is the company which has done the work, and it is the company which certifies that its work complies with the Building Regulations.

Yes - it is a person's name and signature on the form, just as it will be the Company Secretary's name and signature on other legal documents that the company issues. Yes, there has to be a (at least one) Qualified Supervisor, just like there has to be a Company Secretary, but they are not signing documents as individuals, it is the company that is signing them, legally.

A QS for an registered firm cannot even self-certify his own work at home, because he is not registered - it's the firm which is.

if they can, then how is that any different to saying that for the duration of that job, the person that did the install was working for you as an unpaid trainee?

None - if that is the truth. (Here it appears not to be).

An individually registered electrician is quite at liberty to supervise and direct the work of unregistered or unqualified people, as long as he can justifiably claim that he was responsible for everything that was done.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

As far as I am aware firms can't be specifically (i.e. it has to be a nominated person that registers).

No - it is the company which registers - the nominated person(s) are the one(s) whose qualifications etc have to be acceptable to the scheme organiser for them to be regarded as qualified supervisor(s), and it is the presence of QSs which allows the firm to meet the requirements for registering.

My interpretation (which might be wrong, I'm not a spark, and haven't investigated the various scheme providers rules etc), is that the person signing it off has to have been in charge of the whole process (design, install and test), so perhaps when I say work done themselves that's wrong...

Yup - in charge of, responsible for. Just like every electrician who has ever signed an EIC when it was his apprentice who did some of the work. Yes, the apprentice would have been told what to do, and yes the electrician would have checked it over, but it wasn't the electrician who actually did the work. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

* New lower notification fee when a qualified spark (who is not a member of a Part P scheme) is doing the work, i.e. will just send in EIC/MWC with some proof of credentials - say £25 or so...

LABCs are allowed to do that, and some of them do.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Unfortunately though, the building regs don't allow for this at the moment.

Is that where the blame lies? I would need to trawl through all the regulations, but I seem to remember that it's the self certificating bodies (NICEIC etc) which decide what they will accept and therefore notify to LABC. LABC uses this as sufficient evidence that Part P of the building regs has been complied with. All the building regs requires is the 'reasonable provision in design and installation' stuff.

Yup - that's what they require in terms of P1.

But that is completely separate from notification. Part P (in fact all of the Building Regulations) applies to any work whatsoever on fixed electrical cables or fixed electrical equipment located on the consumer’s side of the electricity supply meter which operate at low or extra-low voltage and are—
(a) in or attached to a dwelling;
(b) in the common parts of a building serving one or more dwellings, but excluding power supplies to lifts;
(c) in a building that receives its electricity from a source located within or shared with a dwelling; or
(d) in a garden or in or on land associated with a building where the electricity is from a source located within or shared with a dwelling.

Whilst the technical requirement of P1 is pretty vague, the requirements for notification are not.

What would make eminent sense is that if the NICEIC etc member electrician decides that the installation is safe (which is what we want) and 'reasonable provision' has been made, he signs the forms. He can very easily in many cases assess whether this has been done by questioning the DIYer and looking at his work. He certainly doesn't in all cases need to design it himself, or decide where the chases are, or decide whether its 2.5mm t/e or 1.5mm t/e, in advance.

Yes he does, because otherwise he cannot self-certify work that he did. Because he hasn't done it.

It's not like signing the 3rd part of an EIC - Building Regulations certifications is self-certification, not certification of somebody else's work that he's happy with.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I cannot see why they would be held responsible any more than they are today. They inspect and educate their self employed members and could argue they do all is reasonably possible to keep them in line. Any electrician worth his salt could very quickly assertain whether an existing installation in a shed was safe and should be able to certify that and that certification ultimately be accepted by LABC.

Whether he should be able to or not is a separate issue.

Right now he may not.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Surely that is no different to you signing off a minor works addition.

You are only signing to say your addition is compliant with the regs. There is no way you could ever say for sure the rest of the installation does, short of rewiring it all.

Is this where we poke fun at Mark Coles?

 

[RF Lighting]

Poke away

 

[Spark123]

Go whip him with some blue artic grade flex too

 

[Hallsy]

Well, great debate there guys.

At the end of the day, if I decided to contact LABC have them come out before, during, after - whatever, then it would all be the same.

My question would still remain. Either method is OK in terms of regs, circuit loading, etc but one probably makes more sense than the other in real day to day terms.

Shame that people can't be bothered to give a decent answer from experience these days.

These sort of responses won't stop electrical novices doing the work, it will just mean they are more likely to make an even bigger **** up.