Re-wire required - DIY after going on a course?

[ColJack]

they ought to do a "DIY house rewire" course, that includes the LABC fees for re-wiring your own house..

 

[1john]

where do you draw the line though Coljack?

 

[ban-all-sheds]

So, surprise, surprise lots of reasons why you can't.

More "perhaps shouldn't" than "can't". Apart from the realities of Building Regulations and LABCs.

You don't want to be a qualified electrician and you don't want to wire more than the one house.

1, 100 or 1,000,000 it makes no difference, you still need to know what you're doing.

I haven't seen any three day courses, but many short courses will give you all you need

Not if you're starting from scratch, no way.

Alex - if you're interested enough to consider the course, and if you are starting from a base of some knowledge then I suggest this.

Don't do one of the 3 or 5-day commercial courses, look for one at a local college which is 1 evening a week for 10-12 weeks - that will give you more time to study on your own to bolster what the course gives you, and you might find that your lecturer is a decent chap who is happy to answer questions outside of lectures, as long as you don't take the p***. When I did mine the guy certainly was - he was an electrician whose main job was teaching the C&G day release people, and I suspect he wished the EAL DI course hadn't been invented, but stable doors and all that, plus he was lumbered with a Business Manager whose idea of pre-qualifying applicants was to ask "What is your name?" and "How would you like to pay?". He seemed genuinely concerned that people should do OK, and told us we could always call him at work if we weren't sure about something, even after we'd finished the course.

 

[viewer]

BAS spot on. The short course you describe is exactly what I was thinking of - and is fun. What seems to have been twisted with the 5 day courses is that they were originally intended for tradespeople like kitchen fitters or builders who were already doing some minor works as a part of their work. The idea was that they would do it safely, know what was within their capabilities and know what was required by Part P (they would already be familiar with other Building Regs). There was no intention to create fast track electricians.

 

[dingbat]

(they would already be familiar with other Building Regs)

Best laugh I've had in a long time!

If there is one thing that the building trades are almost universally not familiar with it is the regulations which govern their activities!

 

[Weavertronix]

If you can already rewire a house there's not much point doing a 3 day course - just notify building control and do the work.

If however you just assume you can wire a house and expect a 3 day course to confirm what you already thought (which I suspect from your suggestion that you leave all the existing wiring in place until you have installed the new wiring), it would be best to get a professional in to do it all for you.

The idea of thinking you can "train as an electrician" just to rewire your own house and be able to do it to a decent standard and still save money sounds almost comical to me:

"Well, she's got $10 in here. It costed me $900 for the 6 weeks of unicycle lessons so we are a little in the red, but you gotta spend money to make money champ, moving on.."

 

[diyAlex]

Thanks for all the feedback. We went with paying the pros to do it in the end - 4.7k and 2 weeks later the place is completely done.

One contractor would've worked along the lines of we do the chasing/fitting/running the cables and he would just do (and therefore just charge for) the actual electrical work. Would be nice to do it this way to get everything just as we want it, but this would take a very long time.

In the end the idea of a couple of guys coming in and it all getting done in one hit won. And they were very good about accommodating extras during the work without affecting the quote price too.