Is electrician telling me the truth?!

[brightondiynotfan]

redoing kitchen... plasterer needs to skim the walls, but also need new sockets added to the ring main.

first electrician says I could hollow out the walls for the new socket boxes and chase in the cable myself. He'd come in and connect up once the plasterer had been. And he'd give me instructions as to how I should run the cable. Saves him time, and me money.

Second electrician says I'm not allowed to install socket boxes or run in the cable, even if I'm not connecting up - "it's a kitchen, all notifiable, you see".

So who's correct? Can't see the point of paying an electrician for an extra day of donkey work if i could legally do it myself!

Incidentally, could i extend the ring main entirely myself, and then just notify it?

cheers

 

[Spark123]

It is up to the electrician, if he is signing for installing the work then he is within his right not to sign for someone else doing it.

 

[Click-Sure]

You make mention of a kitchen and extending the ring (presumably the existing downstairs ring?) or is there a 'kitchen ring' allready in place?

Doing it yourself and notifying is all very well and good, but kitchens tend to be a bit more complex than general wiring around the rest of the house and theres a lot to think about, but have a read of the wiki, search the forum and by all means post and ask.

However, if in your shoes I'd get the spark to do the lot, unless you really fancy reading up and having a bash yourself.

 

[festa]

As is mentioned above it`s totally up to the spark doing the work whether he is happy signing off someone else`s work.
If it was me i would go through your install with you marking up in chalk where you are to chase cables and backbox`s in as in kitchens a lot of the routes taken are governed by fixings of potential unit`s, height`s of worktops and the like.
Has the spark`s carried out any check`s / test`s on the original install?
Check`s would include ...
Earthing arrangement`s
Max demand both current and expected
loop impedances to ensure extending the current ring final circuit wont take limiting value`s over what is expected by BS7671
ETC ETC....

 

[SparkyNinja]

As the guys above said..

... but one thing I have experienced latley. You need to be absolutley sure that the electrician will make himself accountable for all the work, including the containment methods. I am in the middle of discussions with Brent council over a similar debate. They are not happy for us to sign off a notifiable job, because we did not carry out the works. We have done a full Periodic but they are not accepting it as we were not the electricians who did the cabling and so in their opinion we cannot guarantee the exact wiring method and that they are compliant with part p.

So from my experience, if the job is notifiable, get a spark to do the entire job, or be accountable for it.