suspended cable to Detached garage

If there is a tenant in-situ then one is supposed to supply each EICR to them. If there isn't, then it's perfectly OK to only offer the latest.
Indded so - but, as I said, each of them (including the first one) appears to trigger a requirement to 'remedy' any C1s/C2 (coded on that particular EICR) within 28 days.
I do have to wonder how often they ever ask for one unless there's something else going on to attract their attention ?
As I've said before, I suspect that they never request an EICR unless a tenant complains to them about something.
A second (or subsequent) EICR is sufficient to prove having dealt with any C1 or C2 defects on the earlier one.
As I see it, that's where it starts getting a bit messy/unclear. If the C1/C2 defect related to something 'measured', then if the second EICR shows a satisfactory measurement then that does, indeed, indicate that the defect reported in the first EICR has probably been 'dealt with' satisfactory. However, if it's not a case of a 'measurement' but, rather, an alleged 'defect'/non-compliance which is not mentioned on the second EICR, then who are officialdom meant to 'believe'?.....

.... Is there some reason why they should 'believe' the chronologically second EICR (which didn't mention the defect), rather than the chronologically first one, which said that there was a defect that was at least 'potentially dangerous', triggering a requirement for it to be 'remedied' within 28 days of that initial inspection ?? A true defect present at the time of the first inspect may indeed, be due to it having been remedied before the second inspection, but it may also mean that the second inspector didn't regard it as a C1/C2 'defect' - and, if that's the case, why should officialdom believe the second inspector rather than the first one?

Kind Regards, John
 
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Surely all that's required is to attend to the faults and some notes to that effect attached to the EICR.
 
As to what they are, consider lightning is around. That can induce massive voltage surges into the power lines, which can "blow" your sensitive electrical equipment - mostly because most of it is cheap s**t designed by clueless f**kwits with no idea how to design robust power supplies - coupled with penny pinching beancounter that will do anything to shave 0.1p off the cost of production if they can. A surge protector is basically a small box with some voltage sensitive devices in - if the voltage across it reaches a certain level, it will start to conduct, and shunt the surge off to earth.
Whilst that is all ('qualitatively') true, I have to say that, in terms of my personal experience, I have lived with electrical/electronic equipment for more decades than I care to remember (the last 35years of which have been in an area where a high proportion of distribution is 'overhead') without ever (that I can recall) having suffered the failure of anything electrical/electronic in temporal association with electric storms in the vicinity. Maybe I've just been lucky but, for me, the 'risk' has clearly been minimal.

The argument might be slightly different when there is a tenant involved, but as far as owner-occupiers are concerned I really do think that we should be free to decide whether or not we are happy to accept this (very small) risk (to items of equipment, not people), so I am very unhappy with the idea that there should be 'regulatory requirement' for me to have protection I didn't want. As things stand think I do retain the 'right' to make that decision, but I have to wonder 'for how long'?!

Kind Regards, John
 
Yesterday I attempted to do some work kneeling atop a shipping container painted with matt black waterproofing, something like Aquaseal or Synthaproof. An IR contactless thermometer read 53.2°C. I was up there for about 15 seconds.
 
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Surely all that's required is to attend to the faults and some notes to that effect attached to the EICR.
As I've said, it's not necessarily anything like as simple as that. You seem to be assuming that the 'faults' are 'real', and that they are are reasonably coded as C2 (or C1), but that is not necessarily the case.

The problem arises if an initial EICR reports alleged defects, coded as C2(or C1) which many people (quite possibly including someone who conducted a subsequent EICR) did not feel existed at al or, at least, did not believe they deserved a C2. Landlords should not be expected to pay good money for 'attending to faults' which do not exist, or being 'force' to pay good money to remedy defects which did not warrant a C2 (least of all, pay good money to the person who had invented the need for the work!).

On the other hand, if a second EICR is done, why should anyone (tenant or LA) believe a second one which said that no urgent remedial work was required, rather than the first one which said that there was 'potential danger' such that 'urgent remedial action was required'?

Kind Regards, John
 
As I've said, it's not necessarily anything like as simple as that. You seem to be assuming that the 'faults' are 'real', and that they are are reasonably coded as C2 (or C1), but that is not necessarily the case.

The problem arises if an initial EICR reports alleged defects, coded as C2(or C1) which many people (quite possibly including someone who conducted a subsequent EICR) did not feel existed at al or, at least, did not believe they deserved a C2. Landlords should not be expected to pay good money for 'attending to faults' which do not exist, or being 'force' to pay good money to remedy defects which did not warrant a C2 (least of all, pay good money to the person who had invented the need for the work!).

On the other hand, if a second EICR is done, why should anyone (tenant or LA) believe a second one which said that no urgent remedial work was required, rather than the first one which said that there was 'potential danger' such that 'urgent remedial action was required'?

Kind Regards, John
Yes I appreciate your explanation, however the EICR has been done and theoretically 'someone' could check to see any faults have been corrected. Technically the T&E span is incorrect, yes I know there are thousands of similar installations which have been trouble free for decades, but that doesn't change the fact it's non compliant now.
As a landlord myself I'd not hesitate to put it right and at £40 for 25m plus labour it's a no brainer. right or wrong my peace of mind I'm up to date and compliant is essential.


Which reminds me I should resurrect the outdoor lighting thread.
 
Yes I appreciate your explanation, however the EICR has been done and theoretically 'someone' could check to see any faults have been corrected. Technically the T&E
I'm not sure qhether you are talking 'in general' (as I was) or specifically in relation to the OP of this thread. However, certainly for the former, and possibly for the latter, it surely depends upon how correct' the EICR was - i.e. whether the alleged faults exist and, if they do, whether they can reasonably coded as C2 ?
Technically the T&E span is incorrect, yes I know there are thousands of similar installations which have been trouble free for decades, but that doesn't change the fact it's non compliant now.
We can probably agree that it's not really ideal, but provided it is high enough and adequately supported, I wonder what actual regulations you feel that a couple of metres of overhead T+E is non-compliant with? Perhaps more to the point, even if specific reg(s) can be quoted, do you think that many EICR inspectors would feel that it was 'potentially dangerous' to the extent that remedial action was suddenly needed (after 20 years of being there)?
As a landlord myself I'd not hesitate to put it right and at £40 for 25m plus labour it's a no brainer. right or wrong my peace of mind I'm up to date and compliant is essential.
I'm not sure where "£40 for 25m plus labour" came from but, again, you are talking about the specific (per OP), not the general problem I was discussing. You may not ';hesitate to put it right' when it is something fairly minor, but what if the EICR had given a C2 to a plastic CU (it's certainly happened), or the alleged need for some other fairly major remedial work that you really didn't believe should be coded as C2.

Kind Regards, John
 
Hi, thanks for all the comments it really is very helpful.

Reading through again, am I right in assuming that if I remedy all the faults, which I am doing, I won't need to have the property tested again when I do get a tenant ? As I said earlier the property has never had a tenant to-date.

I was assuming it's like an MOT. Once you get the faults fixed you must have it tested again to get the Certificate ?

But if this test will suffice and I can prove the faults have been fixed I won't need it re-testing ?
 
Whilst that is all ('qualitatively') true, I have to say that, in terms of my personal experience, I have lived with electrical/electronic equipment for more decades than I care to remember (the last 35years of which have been in an area where a high proportion of distribution is 'overhead') without ever (that I can recall) having suffered the failure of anything electrical/electronic in temporal association with electric storms in the vicinity. Maybe I've just been lucky but, for me, the 'risk' has clearly been minimal.
Very much YMMV
With a previous work hat on, I regularly went to our MDs house to replace equipment. In that case, overhead electric supply, overhead phone from a completely different direction - in effect, it was like having the house in the middle of along wire antenna laid out to pick up such surges.
However, as far as ai recall, it was ONLY things like fax machines, cordless phone bases, computer modems - i.e. things connected to both power and phone - that were affected, something I've seen elsewhere as well. As far as surges on either the mains or the phone line, they are generally common mode - so equipment connected only to one or the other generally isn't affected. But when you introduce a ground referenced "other" circuit then you introduce the scope to turn the common mode surge on one circuit into a differential mode surge between that and the other circuit.
I vaguely recall having lost a modem myself from this.
The second worst I've seen was going back further still when a customer came back from working in Madagascar with a seriously I'll set of equipment. His laptop had been connected to the phone line via internal modem, on the modem board the top of a chip had been blown off and there was evidence of it arcing across to the main board. His printer was also connected, and its power brick had literally blown the case apart. They have some serious thunderstorms out there :eek: It was a fair old repair bill - and he was a bit miffed that none of the "cheap stuff" like table lamps or ordinary phones was affected at all. Obviously that's non-UK and a bit extreme, but indicates what can happen.

The very worst was at the same job as in the first anecdote - except it was at the factory & offices before I worked for them (I was doing IT support as a contractor at the time). At my office a few miles away it had almost turned back to night, the rain was like nothing I've seen before or since, lightning going ten to the dozen. Then the client rang to say there'd been a big flash and bang, the computers had stopped working, and there was a burning smell coming from the back room (where the server was). Again, that wasn't the surge per-se, but the differential mode caused by the high localised currents induced by (my best guess, based on description, a ground strike in the field outside). Basically, the further apart two devices were (all serial links back then) the worse the damage. Got the server back up with just one of the four 16 port cards working, replaced a lot of serial port cards in PCs, had the main boards in a load of Macs replaced, and got to be fairly handy at whipping the back off the Wyse 60 terminals and replacing the 1488 and 1489 chips (the sacrificial RS232 converters that saved the mainboard in most of the terminals), the few where it was more serious got stacked on a pallet and sent off for repair.

BUT, adding an SPD to the CU will do absolutely nothing whatsoever to help with the issues I've described above - well very little anyway. It will only help if you also route the phone line via the CU location and pass it through a surge protector connected very stoutly with a very short wire to the CU earth bar, or better still the earth terminal of the mains SPD. Ditto for aerial cables and anything else coming in from outside the protected zone. Since BS7671 doesn't even recommend any of this, the requirement for an SPD sounds a bit like someone on the committee seeing an opportunity to sell more hardware.
In the factory/office one, no phone lines involved - and even within one building, there was sufficient earth potential difference across the building to blow the serial driver chips. Again, SPDs in the distribution boards would not have done any good.

However, the worry these days is that there is so much more electronics in a typical home, and it's built to much lower standards. But I personally wouldn't bother too much.

On the other hand, if a second EICR is done, why should anyone (tenant or LA) believe a second one which said that no urgent remedial work was required, rather than the first one which said that there was 'potential danger' such that 'urgent remedial action was required'?
Like an MoT - it's the most recent inspection of the installation. Unless you have genuine grounds to believe it was not done correctly then that should be the one that applies. Otherwise, you could start arguing as to how long apart EICRs need to be before that is a question - after all, why trust the one done today with no faults vs the one done 5 years ago with a list of them ?
Technically the T&E span is incorrect, yes I know there are thousands of similar installations which have been trouble free for decades, but that doesn't change the fact it's non compliant now.
What's it non-compliant with ?
I'm aware that PVC degrades when exposed to UV, and I've seen recommendations to paint over the cables, but walk round any housing estate and you'll see T&E exposed to the weather on many houses. If it's not showing signs of having gone brittle yet, I'd say not a serious problem.
Reading through again, am I right in assuming that if I remedy all the faults, which I am doing, I won't need to have the property tested again when I do get a tenant ?
Correct
I was assuming it's like an MOT. Once you get the faults fixed you must have it tested again to get the Certificate ?
No, you just need to have fixed any faults.
The regs don't say much about how you document that - after all, a fault could be a broken light switch that you can replace yourself. So really it's just a case of having documentary evidence of them having been attended to.
However, for some they might prefer to have a "clean sheet" to give to a tenant. Some tenants (thankfully only a small minority - in 20+ years I've only ever had one) can be devious sods who will look for any little technicality to try and wriggle out of paying the rent or otherwise profiting from you. Giving them a copy of an EICR with a load of faults, and a statement that they've all been fixed, might give the unscrupulous scope for trying to claim that they haven't been fixed and effectively extorting money.
 
thanks for that. I wondered why he replied a bit sheepishly when I said I'd fix all the faults and have to get him back to issue the Certificate.

In one aspect he's found lots of faults which I'm grateful for but I still think he went OTT regarding the cable to the garage but thanks to you guys I have a workable solution as proposed earlier.

many thanks
PS he noted as C3 that there are 4 single sockets that don't have on/off switches. They are original sockets in bedrooms from when the house was built in the early 80's. It's an easy job so I'll change those as well then apart from the Surge Protection everything will have been fixed :)
 
PS he noted as C3 that there are 4 single sockets that don't have on/off switches. They are original sockets in bedrooms from when the house was built in the early 80's. It's an easy job so I'll change those as well then apart from the Surge Protection everything will have been fixed :)
There is not and never has been a requirement for sockets to have switches. Leave them alone. Not a C3
 
I'm not sure qhether you are talking 'in general' (as I was) or specifically in relation to the OP of this thread. However, certainly for the former, and possibly for the latter, it surely depends upon how correct' the EICR was - i.e. whether the alleged faults exist and, if they do, whether they can reasonably coded as C2 ?
Generally. Whether the fault exists or not, there is a document to say it does exist and that has to be rectified in some way. A broken accessory is simply replaced and documented (receipt for the replacement clipped to EICR is enough). Something like this cable is a bit trickier, at the moment we don't actually know what the problem is, it could be as brittle as a stick of Blackpool rock, it could have chunks of insulation missing where the window cleaner attacks it with his ladder every month or chewed by the resident rats. Or it could simply be a money making exercise con. If it does need replacing it will require testing and some sort of small works report, either way it needs to be 'cleared from the EICR' by a competant person. A comment from the competant person could be as simple as 'Inspected no fault found' but I wouldn't want to be the person giving evidence in court when something has gone wrong, like the window cleaners electrocution...
We can probably agree that it's not really ideal, but provided it is high enough and adequately supported, I wonder what actual regulations you feel that a couple of metres of overhead T+E is non-compliant with?
The only point I have against the span per se is the unsuitability of the cable for outdoors use. Others have said the same thing.
As a regs catchall it may come under 'design' and 'workmanship' or whatever the correct terms are.
Perhaps more to the point, even if specific reg(s) can be quoted, do you think that many EICR inspectors would feel that it was 'potentially dangerous' to the extent that remedial action was suddenly needed (after 20 years of being there)?
No, unless there is a problem with it as mentioned above.
I'm not sure where "£40 for 25m plus labour" came from but, again, you are talking about the specific (per OP), not the general problem I was discussing. You may not ';hesitate to put it right' when it is something fairly minor, but what if the EICR had given a C2 to a plastic CU (it's certainly happened), or the alleged need for some other fairly major remedial work that you really didn't believe should be coded as C2.

Kind Regards, John
25m of 3C 2.5mm² NYY-J from CEF ~£40.
Like an MoT - it's the most recent inspection of the installation. Unless you have genuine grounds to believe it was not done correctly then that should be the one that applies. Otherwise, you could start arguing as to how long apart EICRs need to be before that is a question - after all, why trust the one done today with no faults vs the one done 5 years ago with a list of them ?

What's it non-compliant with ?
I'm aware that PVC degrades when exposed to UV, and I've seen recommendations to paint over the cables, but walk round any housing estate and you'll see T&E exposed to the weather on many houses. If it's not showing signs of having gone brittle yet, I'd say not a serious problem.
Indeed I agreed with you before your comment
Technically the T&E span is incorrect, yes I know there are thousands of similar installations which have been trouble free for decades,
T&E is not designed for and not classed as an outdoor cable and it degrades with the UV, for that reason it shouldn't be used.
 
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I've just had a go with some flexible black conduit, and, even with the haze (virtually no shadows), got figures very similar to yours. Assuming tomorrow is less hazy (and even hotter),
I've followed up on this in a new thread.

Kind Regards, John
 
Very much YMMV
Indeed. As I said, I can only speak of the personal experiences of myself (and family/friends) - and I have heard (from others) anecdotes such as you describe in which there was a clear temporal relationshiop between equipment failure and electrical storms.

However, I can but repeat the (anecdotal) experience of myself (and those around me)> Ive been living for 50+ years with electronic equipment, and for well over half of that time have had plenty of items running 24/7, including a good few (phone, fax, modems) which had the potential dummy whammy of a phone line connection as well as a 'mains' one - and I really can't recall any 'incidents' temporally-related to lightning. Indeed, thinking more widely about other possible causes for 'surges', over all these decades I have experienced very few unexpected/premature failures of anything electronic (other than very early, sometimes 'out-of-the-box' failures!) - so, personally/anecdotally, I'm not at all sure that I have ever experienced any sort of 'surge'-related failure. However, even if I had, another very relevant point is, as you go on to say ...

BUT, adding an SPD to the CU will do absolutely nothing whatsoever to help with the issues I've described above ...
... and the same is probably true of many of the (very few) 'surge'-related issues which arise. As you then go on to say ...
However, the worry these days is that there is so much more electronics in a typical home, and it's built to much lower standards. But I personally wouldn't bother too much.
... and that's exactly how I feel. Certainly in the 'earlier' days, I've probably had a lot more electronic equipment running than has 'the typical home' and, despite that, have been 'lucky' (if that's how you regard it). It's really impossible to find any 'chapter and verse' about this, but I think the probability of any piece of electronic equipment failing, during its expected lifetime, due to 'surges' is probably incredibly small.

Like an MoT - it's the most recent inspection of the installation. Unless you have genuine grounds to believe it was not done correctly then that should be the one that applies.
It's really a matter of the bit I've highlighted and, as I've often said, the big difference is that with MOTs is there is a formal process available for 'challenging' MOT failures, whereas it appears that that the 'landlord legislation', as written, includes no such facility in the case of electrical inspections/EICRs.

Apart from anything else, if one automatically allows a newer EICR to 'over-ride' an earlier one, then given that (unfortunately) there clearly are at least some some 'unscrupulous' people around doing EICRs, it's not impossible that, having received an initial EICR full of (genuine) C2's someone could 'find a way' to get a second one which showed few, if any, C2s!
What's it non-compliant with ? I'm aware that PVC degrades when exposed to UV, and I've seen recommendations to paint over the cables, but walk round any housing estate and you'll see T&E exposed to the weather on many houses. If it's not showing signs of having gone brittle yet, I'd say not a serious problem.
Quite so. As you've seen, I'vce asked the same question. As you say, there are countless houses (including mine) that have exposed T+E on the outside walls, and I wonder whether the OP's EICR inspector would also code those as C2. Whether attached to a wall of 'suspended', I'm not convinced that (unless the cable had clearly deteriorated) it could ever be reasonably coded as C2.

Kind Regards, John
 

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