partp- consumer unit change

[annemarie]

Thank you to everyone for all your help. I will investigate how a possible breach of CDM may be pursued.

Back to C and O and building control tomorrow. I suspect that Ikea's relationship with C and O is outside of CDM legislation but I may be wrong about that.

OK.... back to the day job

 

[comms]

My cousin (who lives in Bath) back in January had the same crowd in to do her Ikea kitchen.
The electrician said pretty much the same to them " new consumer unit needed & bonding upgrade" (no mention of undersized tails) & quoted £450 ontop of the kitchen cost.
She called me down for a day prior to kitchen install to do the cu change (for the price of roast dinner & beer).
Following day she's on the phone letting me know that the electrician was all snotty & tried to find fault with my work, only thing he picked up was lack of certs ( i use easycert so send them via email/pdf) & was well miffed when she printed off the EIC, & would I mind visiting again just to view their work as she felt uneasy with the sparks work (lots of mess little to show).

I found his cert had same results for kitchen ring even though he'd extended circuit. I tested circuit & found lack of continuity on line & neutral , traced fault to above worktop 20amp DP switch (that cousin said didnt work so left it turned off) for washing machine that had one ring leg with spured leg in supply terminals & other ring leg in load terminals. So apart from being unable to isolate the washer, it actually turned a ring into a radial when turned off.

Pelmet lighting spured off ring no fcu & flex from lighting plastered in wall & connected directly in to socket.

no cpc-flylead on chrome light switches that had been installed + lack of ID sleeving for 2 way switching & again same test results as my schedule, even after the circuit had been extended.

I put the faulty ring right, retested the ring & lighting to make sure all was well, dissconnected the pelmet lights, & told her to get them to supply a competent electrician to come back & issue a cert that had the right results & not copied from my certs & install the pelmet lights correctly.
Told her to enquire about notification with labc.

The sparks was registered with napit & she did get the part p notification through the post, not that its worth the paper its written on when she was left with crap workmanship that a decent sparks would be ashamed with.

So you are not alone.


As for your electrician my money is on that he's done a 5 day disqual part P course at a college. The type of course where the pupils are more often than not told thats all they need for niceic (or any other scheme) registration.

For what its worth get back in contact with the niceic & labc they are supposed to be cracking down on this kind of thing.

Hope its sorted soon.

 

[333rocky333]

We used to do electrical work for a kitchen install firm, there job was to go and put right the work when people complained to b+q, as b+q would not get the original people back who done it.

Most of our work though was where they did NOT put a new board in, when it was needed and just spurred and bodged it all.

When we had to rip out all the units and tiles to redo the kitchen and then expect to go upstairs to test the circuits,after fitting the board and then finding numerous faults elsewhere in the house , the owners would then get funny with us.

One house had no earth wires to all her brass fittings , hardly any earth coming into the building causing too high readings throughout, reverse polarity sockets, all on the upstairs.

To which the owner said, what has that got to do with the kitchen and thought we were trying it on.


Although they were all bad installs, there was proberly also thousands of instals that were ok that we did not hear about.

B+q did help these out, so I would expect ikea to be similar

 

[comms]

Might be of interest to some
Had a booklet drop on the mat this morning from BERR (dept for business, enterprise & regulatory reform) formerly the DTI.

"The consumer protection from unfair trading regulations a guide for business"

Theres a section about "falsely claiming accreditation" like belonging to niceic / corgi etc etc.

www.businesseye.org.uk (for wales)

www.businesslink.gov.uk/unfairtrading (england)

www.berr.gov.uk

 

[ban-all-sheds]

As for your electrician my money is on that he's done a 5 day disqual part P course at a college.

Is that "Domestic Installers qualification", or "disqualified"?

The type of course where the pupils are more often than not told thats all they need for niceic (or any other scheme) registration.

Well it is the only qualification they need, but they still have to pass the assessment.

For what its worth get back in contact with the niceic & labc they are supposed to be cracking down on this kind of thing.

Let's see - who was it who invented the 5-day DI NVQ.......

 

[comms]

Just opend the latest copy of the connections mag from NICEIC & read an article on page 7

"NICEIC fraudster guilty:
A Dorset electrician who gave a customer a false safety certificate has been fined £1750 & ordered to pay £8350 compensation.
B****** P**** L****, who traded as *&* Electrical services in Blandford & Salisbury, pleaded guilty to two charges, one of which involved using the NICEIC logo despite not being a registered contractor."

"Any business fraudulently claiming to have qualifications or approval or approval by bodies concerned with safety can expect to be rigorously investigated" said Ivan Hancock divisional trading standards manager for Dorset county council."

Something for you to use annemarie .

 

[annemarie]

Dear All
Thank you very much for your advice. Core and Ore have been in contact with Cardiff building control with regards to regularisation of the work.
I am in the process of passing information to Trading Standards so that they can decide how to proceed with investigation- criminal or civil.
Anne Marie

 

[annemarie]

On another note- the original quotation includes:
"Part P Certificate(additional to test), & including-upgraded earth bonding to ciruit board £140"

Is this normal?

 

[Spark123]

Your main bonding needs to be adequate before any alterations or additions can be carried out, so if it isn't then that would need to be done before a new CU, kitchen wiring etc.
As for price, can't see, can't quote.

 

[annemarie]

Uhm..... but is it normal to charge for Part P certification per se? I thought that if the electrician was able to self-certify then there should be no additional charge for certification as it is an obligation after doing the work. I can understand that if building control were to be involved then an extra charge may be necessary.

Ane the person who did the original quote did not recognise that a new consumer unit would be needed, despite quoting for additional bonding.

Sorry.... we are getting a bit sceptical about everything now. We paid:

new 40A supply from fuse box £200
move fuse box to higher level £100
2xfuse spur for d/w +hood, 1x s/socket for f/f £160
3x extra double sockets £180
part p certificate etc as above £140
new consumer unit £350

 

[Spark123]

The notification will be in with the price, think it is only a few £s per job for a self certifying sparky, with LABC it can be into the hundreds depending on where you live.

As your electrician cannot self certify then he is committing fraud by charging you for that service and not using the only legal route available to him, the LABC route.

 

[annemarie]

So £140 seems a lot for a Part P cert then. I remember at the time of the quote we mentioned that since we knew the CU would have to be moved we had considered getting it done in advance but they said we would then incur 2 seperate Part P charges - one from first electrician and another from theirs for the kitchen circuits.

 

[Spark123]

£140 for a piece of valueless paper?
I can make you a certificate with MSpaint with part P written at the top, of no value whatsoever as I can't self certify either. £135 sound like a fair price?

 

[annemarie]

As your electrician cannot self certify then he is committing fraud by charging you for that service and not using the only legal route available to him, the LABC route.

Quote came from Core and Ore 'pre-installation visit' - and from someone who is not a qualified electrician, which may be why he fails to notice that new CUs are needed. But the Part P/bonding quote seems to be standard with them.

 

[Spark123]

Maybe, but that is core and ores problem. Square pegs and round holes springs to mind.