rental with no rcd.

[jurassic sparkk]

Went to look at a job yesterday where people have purchased a property and want to rent it out the fuseboard is old, no rcd protection earthing 6mm main earth no water and gas earth bonds tails are 16mm with 80 amp upfront main head require a 4inch fan in bathroom 6inch fan in kitchen and when I sent them the price they called back saying another electrician had done a report on the property saying it was all ok to start with and the fusebox was fine apart from being plastic not metal discuss if you wish regarding it being a rental property not a private living address oh and no smoke alarms installed either.

kitchen is concrete under a fault condition will be considered as real earth..no rcd protection there.

 

[ebee]

A quick phone call to your local Clown Hall might give you some independent considerations .

I was once asked to make a small addition to a house electrics and noticed some questionable things only to be informed that the house wiring had been repaired and additions done as a result of a house fire. I was told the insurance company had provided their own "Electrician" from amongst their pool of private contractors.
I asked if they had any paperwork - I was wondering if they had a PIR and an EIC, the only paperwork they had was a letterhead from the contractor that read something like:-
This is to certify that the electrical wiring at XXX XXX XXX conforms to NICEIC Wiring Regulations , dated xx xx xx.
Subsequently as a result of my informing Care and Repair UK (They had contracted me to do this small job), they employed another contractor to do a PIR (EICR as it is nowadays called) and the results were astonishing.
Some defects would have existed before the fire anyway but some of the repairs and subsequent additions were pretty grim too.
Last I heard, 12 months later, the insurance company deciding what to do.

 

[Murdochcat]

If the customer doesn’t want your advice and has a satisfactory EICR then walk away

Not your problem

 

[JohnW2]

If the customer doesn’t want your advice and has a satisfactory EICR then walk away Not your problem

I suppose that's pragmatically true (i.e. 'not the OP's problem), but if there are no RCDs and no main bonding then it obviously should not have a 'clean' EICR.

Were I in the OP's position (which I never will be), I would probably feel morally/professionally obliged to 'say something' to the owner of the property.

 

[SUNRAY]

If the customer doesn’t want your advice and has a satisfactory EICR then walk away

Not your problem

Actually under H&S but more so 'duty of care' it is your problem.
It is possible you could be approached after an accident to give evidence and part of that questioning could be 'why did you ignore it'.

 

[SUNRAY]

Went to look at a job yesterday where people have purchased a property and want to rent it out the fuseboard is old, no rcd protection earthing 6mm main earth no water and gas earth bonds tails are 16mm with 80 amp upfront main head require a 4inch fan in bathroom 6inch fan in kitchen and when I sent them the price they called back saying another electrician had done a report on the property saying it was all ok to start with and the fusebox was fine apart from being plastic not metal discuss if you wish regarding it being a rental property not a private living address oh and no smoke alarms installed either.

kitchen is concrete under a fault condition will be considered as real earth..no rcd protection there.

If in your opinion it is dangerous and you are a member of a scheme nic/nap the very least I'd do is log your findings with them. They will ignore it but at least you can claim you did your duty.

 

[ericmark]

Actually under H&S but more so 'duty of care' it is your problem.
It is possible you could be approached after an accident to give evidence and part of that questioning could be 'why did you ignore it'.

That is very true, and for heath and safety unlike most contracts is must be in writing, although it says nothing about being on paper, so be it an email, text message, or letter you must tell them in writing.

It can simply be, as required under HSE regulations the letter is to confirm my opinion that the lack of RCD etc, earth sizing etc etc, mean this property is not in a safe condition to use as accommodation, i.e. potentially dangerous. Then you are in the clear, even if they through it in the bin, that's not your problem.

However the other issue is if the faults you have found in the eyes of a court would make the premiss potentially dangerous? This is not so easy to prove, we can very easily say it does not comply with the current BS 7671 as a new installation, but every edition of BS 7671 has the date after which designed must apply. So if in 1965 the house wiring was designed without any earths to the lights, (assuming no wall lights) and the design has not altered over the years, then it still complies with the version current at the time of the design.

Well not quite, as before 1992 it was not BS 7671, but some how you would need to show the design has altered, clearly the design has altered in 1965 there were no LED lights, and we find phrases like

Lighting fittings using filament lamps installed in a room having a non-conducting floor, mounted at such a height that they cannot readily be touched and are out of reach of earthed metal.

so installing LED lighting means you need an earth. There are other changes in 2008 RCD's were required for most circuits, and

Where the location containing a bath or shower is in a building with a protective equipotential bonding system in accordance with Regulation 411.3.1.2, supplementary equipotential bonding may be omitted where all of the following conditions are met:

is normally where lack of RCD protection becomes a problem, and we can say lack of the RCD is potentially dangerous.

We have other items like the manufacturers of showers, immersion heaters, and boiler stipulating RCD protection is required. But unless you know what the manufacturers instructions say, it is hard to say lack of RCD is potentially dangerous.

Don't misunderstand what I am saying, I feel there should be RCD protection,

this was in the electrical safety councils best practice guide well past 2008 when RCD protection was required for sockets.

So maybe best is still to do nothing, which would include raising the issue on any forum.

 

[ebee]

Were I in the OP's position (which I never will be), I would probably feel morally/professionally obliged to 'say something' to the owner of the property.

Agreed - I could not leave things unsaid, and in my (moral estimation) I would be complicit in any harm to befall that might be have a possibillity avoided if my warnings were to be heeded.
We all have a duty of care morally to our fellow man.
We have, as I understand it, a legal duty of care to our fellow man.
How and to what extent we discharge that duty might often debateable.

 

[ebee]

If the customer doesn’t want your advice and has a satisfactory EICR then walk away

Not your problem

I disagree

 

[oldbutnotdead]

So all they wanted from you was to supply and fit the fans? Sounds as if they don't actually have an EICR, just a 'yes its all ok, gimme £50)' type assessment undertaken pre purchase.
They may not be aware that standards required are different for rentals- the wiring, appliances etc pretty much have to comply with current standards rather than what was permitted when it was installed.
If you have alerted them to the deficiencies in writing (text, email) then morally and i believe legally you are covered. Not sure where you'd stand if you did install the fans (obviously to current standards) and left everything else alone.

 

[ericmark]

@oldbutnotdead does make a good point, when I bought this house we had a house buyers report done, within the report it did talk about the electrical installation, pointing out a disused fuse box for example between the new ceiling and old ceiling, it was in fact still in use. However it was an electrical installation condition report made by a professional so must count as an EICR even with no codes.

I did consider this and looked on the new English landlord law for where it says the report should contain codes to show how bad faults are, and failed to find any.

We all know the home buyers report is not done to the same degree to what we would consider to be an EICR, but to the letter of the law, it would be hard to prove a home buyers report with references as to the state of the electrical installation is not an EICR. I see nothing in the law which says the codes must be used.

 

[SUNRAY]

Went to look at a job yesterday where people have purchased a property and want to rent it out the fuseboard is old, no rcd protection earthing 6mm main earth no water and gas earth bonds tails are 16mm with 80 amp upfront main head require a 4inch fan in bathroom 6inch fan in kitchen and when I sent them the price they called back saying another electrician had done a report on the property saying it was all ok to start with and the fusebox was fine apart from being plastic not metal discuss if you wish regarding it being a rental property not a private living address oh and no smoke alarms installed either.

kitchen is concrete under a fault condition will be considered as real earth..no rcd protection there.

Thinking further on my other posts if I were in your position and I were in a position to, and competent to issue an EICR I would, particularly if you believe any C!s exist.
Clearly marked as incomplete.

As a private landlord myself I ensure my properties are in good order, in a condition I would be comfortable to live in myself and there is no reason any landlord should be any different to that.

 

[securespark]

If in your opinion it is dangerous and you are a member of a scheme nic/nap the very least I'd do is log your findings with them. They will ignore it but at least you can claim you did your duty.

With things I considered dangerous, I always left paperwork and isolated if possible. If the customer was willing to sign, I'd get that too.

But I knew what the vast majority would do (IE turn stuff on after I'd left). Most people didn't understand that just because they'd been using it for X years without issue, didn't mean it was safe, they'd just been bloody lucky.

The worst case of this was me and a colleague going to "getting shocks off the shower pipes while showering."

We got there and she offered to show is what was happening by donning a swimming suit and getting in the shower.. we told her not only was that not necessary, but it was actually dangerous to do that and that she should not use the shower until it was made safe.

 

[EFLImpudence]

I don't see how anyone can get round this without the installation complying with it.

Interpretation​

2. In these Regulations—
...
“electrical safety standards” means the standards for electrical installations in the eighteenth edition of the Wiring Regulations, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the British Standards Institution as BS 7671: 2018(3);

 

[Murdochcat]

I suppose that's pragmatically true (i.e. 'not the OP's problem), but if there are no RCDs and no main bonding then it obviously should not have a 'clean' EICR.

Were I in the OP's position (which I never will be), I would probably feel morally/professionally obliged to 'say something' to the owner of the property.

I would CMA with an email …..

Which sometimes gets a sensible response but life is too short to worry about lots of this stuff

I often add notes to invoices for maintenance jobs highlighting things I think could be an issue