Basically this is the situation.
I have been in that house for over five years and instead of being one of those cheeky tenants that call the landlord for every single silly things, i tried to take care of the property as if it were my house.
Initially he was nice and funny, then he became more and more distant and over the years he started discarding all my communications regarding the problems in the house, just showing up without notice if he didn't see the money on his account (too much work to get online banking or printing statements on the bank!)
I took over the house in a situation where the previous tenant did bad things and tried to subrent the house to me pretending he was the landlord; as soon as i have discovered it, i have contacted him and we sorted things out. We then used to deal verbally, so when there was a problem I used to tell him and he was getting back to me.
But then major works had to be carried out (the water from rains was pouring on the outside walls and infiltrating inside the house, every room was having mould, the front and rear pavements were broken with tiles falling apart, the carpet was old and filthy etc.)
He kept me waiting for over a year before making a new surface on the pavement and rebuild the surface of the side of the house where we had infiltrations (we discovered that were holes between the bricks under the coating so the water was infiltrating).
During all these years he refused and failed to pay for a Corgi certificate for the boiler, so i had to call a company myself and take care of it this year (but then i deducted the fees from the rent). I have been waiting for months for him to fix up the gutters and he still refuses to replace the carpets, keeping on saying he will send over a professional cleaner (whom i have ben waiting for the past 6 months).
When he came last week (again without notice) to show some guys the gutter problem, I told him the the houses around his have been burglared so i wanted to put back the lights that had been removed by his people over two years ago, and he was staring at me; imasked him if I could do it and he agreed.
He's usually sending over to fix the house people that work for him, so it's difficult to say what's going on. A few years back when I wanted to put the floodlights he sent his handyman that sent to me a young man, a few days later, that run the cables and connected the floodlights to the main consumer box by inserting three wires in it and joining the two floodlights cables and the wires coming out from the consumer unit with a round junction box. He said the Landlord refused tombuy another consumer box just to connect the lights. I had paid him with a cheque and that was it. He used a grey flat very hard cable, difficult to bend, with hard copper wires in it. If yiu remove the coating, you see that the copper wiring of the ground is without any further protection, it's like if the three copper cores have been covered with they grey coating only. He even laid the wiring of one floodlight under the bath tub without any conduit, and he made a hole to take it out from the wall just in proximity of the water pipe of the sink. I don't believe the guy was a proper qualified electrician. Now that i took back the idea of replugging the floodlights, i put 20mm white round conduits all over the outisde of the house, i run a 15mm three cores covered wire (each core has its own colored coating and all the cores are contained in a blue coating), i put a partial conduit (the same as before) under the bath tub (at least under the tub as i cannot reach all the path of the cables in between the pipes), i put an IP55 fuse box as a junction outside the wall, for the cable that runs the sockets into the garden, so i will join the cable coming from the inside of the house to the one running outside the house for future works/expansion... So i think that all the aspects are being covered. I have bought a garage consumer unit in
wickes, which has just one RCD fitted. The only thing left is to connect the new consumer unit to the main one, and to connect the floodlights and the garden sockets to the new consumer unit. I don't mind calling an electrician to finish the job and certify it, but as i reached the 90% of the job myself, i would have wanted to buy and fit the three remaining switches myself to the new consumer unit, plug the consumer unit to the main one (but i could wait for that one) and then call a qualified electrician to check all the work done and if it's been done well, to finish it and certify it. There's no point in calling someone that might work as badly as the old guy a few years ago and pay him to dismantle all I have done and re do it worse. it's true that despite being an IT consultant with some years experience in running and connecting cables I am not an electrician, but i have used all parts that are rated for garden/outdoor use (IP55-IP66 junction boxes, grommets, cable clands, conduits, garden sockets with fuses and covers), good 1.5mm coated 3cores cables.
So, i just want to understand if an only RCD in the new consumer box is enough and i can plug the sockets and the floodlights to separate MCBs, or i need in total 4 RCDs (one already fitted and three for each line). The landlord doesn't care, he won't spend a penny, he just wants the rent at the end of every month, and he agreed for me to take care of it. Whether i do it myself of i call an electrician it's my problem; i do know my limits so as I said I don't mind calling someone who can legally certify things, but I would just prefer to call him, provide him with all the necessary parts (after all the only missing parts now are the three switches, RCDs or MCBs, whatever they will be), have him check the overall situation, connect the wires, certify everything and get his money... The job has been done over the years and has been there sleeping for a good while...
Thanks anyway for the support and the advice!
