Unsafe wiring rodent damage

[swallet]

Hi, I’m a long term reader of these forums but first time poster.
I need some advice on how I stand with regards to some work carried out by an electrician which I think was negligent/below standards.

2 months ago several lights in our hall way, porch and a socket stopped working. Very busy at the time so called an electrician out. Turned up and spent 3 hours in our loft and around the house fault finding. Phoned me (wife was at home not me) and said that the problem was with a single circuit (the socket was wired into the lighting circuit! - warning label now applied). He couldn’t find a fault but had narrowed the problem down to an “inaccessible” area and advised we would need the circuit rewiring to cure the problem. A quote was promised.
Fast forward seven weeks and I haven’t heard anything. An invoice for the fault finding work then arrives, three hours total £120. Quite reasonable but I email back and say great but the problem isn’t fixed please advise. His boss emails back and re-iterates the above:

"A quotation should have been received by you along with the invoice to rewire the one section that he could not access but where he had isolated the fault to”.

Anyway, last night with some time to kill I decide to venture into the loft. I spend about half an hour chasing wires underneath the loft insulation and found that a mouse has chewed through a single run of twin and earth running between two junction boxes and which was feeding the offending lights etc. Exposed copper core, a real state (see pictures)! I removed this wire, replaced with new. Re-wired the junction boxes and hey-presto the lights and everything works.

I emailed the electrician’s boss again complaining that I felt the fault finding had been substandard as I had been able to find the fault and effect a repair in an hour. I was also unhappy to have found dangerous, exposed wires in the loft which his engineer had missed.

Boss then changes his tune and says that his engineer had noticed the rodent damage and that was why we needed a re-wire:

"The reasoning he advised to you to rewire the lighting is as he could see there was extensive rodent damage in areas and examples of poor installation, because of this and after testing the insulation resistance of the cable from motile point, he found this would be the most satisfactory and safe option for your selves.”

I don’t think the guy noticed the rodent damage at all. If he did why didn’t he simply repair it? And more importantly why did he leave it in such a dangerous state which clearly is a fire hazard?

I’ve since been quoted £370 for a circuit rewire. Clearly I’m not going ahead but where would you stand with the original bill? It’s not a lot, it’s a reasonable amount for three hours on site and I understand that if I had spent three hours on site fault finding I would expect to get paid for it. Equally though I would have expected a half decent sparky to have found the dangerous, fire hazard, problem which I so easily did and immediately advise me of the problem.

Would you pay??

 

[JohnW2]

I don’t think the guy noticed the rodent damage at all. If he did why didn’t he simply repair it? And more importantly why did he leave it in such a dangerous state which clearly is a fire hazard? .... where would you stand with the original bill? It’s not a lot, it’s a reasonable amount for three hours on site and I understand that if I had spent three hours on site fault finding I would expect to get paid for it. Equally though I would have expected a half decent sparky to have found the dangerous, fire hazard, problem which I so easily did and immediately advise me of the problem. Would you pay??

Interesting question. You are clearly right in all you say, but (particularly since it is now being claimed that the electrician did detect the rodent damage) it's really down to how much hassle and potential 'nastiness' you think is worthwhile.

If I were you, I think my inclination would be to speak to the electrician's boss and see if I could agree some compromise (rather than just refusing to pay at all) - pointing out that you were able to locate the problem and correct it in a lot less time than the electrician had taken for his fault finding (after which he didn't inform you of the rodent damage).

By the way, if that is how it always is (with no enclosure, and maybe no nearby cable clips), that exposed connector block would not be acceptable (or safe) even in the absence of rodent damage.

Kind Regards, John

 

[oldbutnotdead]

In this day and age I'd have expected your electrician to have taken a couple of pics of any gnawed or dubious cabling (with his phone) and attached then to the quote/invoice. Since he didn't then I'd tend to agree with you. Have a haggle with the boss (along the lines of no-one mentioned rodent damage til you found it yourself, 3 hours is a long time), be prepared to part with £60 or so (OK he didn't fix the fault but he did narrow the search area down for you)

 

[swallet]

Thanks guys.
I’m actually going to terminate and blank off the socket in case someone tries to put a vacuum cleaner on there. I’ve replaced the dodgy connector terminal with an uninterrupted run of twin&earth terminating in a nice new wago box.

I’m going to offer to pay for an hour and a half’s labour (how long it took me) and see what he says. You are right he did narrow down the search for me.

Would the electrician have had a duty to inform me of the dangerous wiring - i.e. some sort of duty of care which they didn’t fulfil (if as is claimed he noticed the rodent damage)?

 

[JohnW2]

I’m going to offer to pay for an hour and a half’s labour (how long it took me) and see what he says.

As I said, that's roughly what I would have done.

Would the electrician have had a duty to inform me of the dangerous wiring - i.e. some sort of duty of care which they didn’t fulfil (if as is claimed he noticed the rodent damage)?

Morally, obviously yes, and maybe also yes in law (I'm no lawyer!) - but I personally would not want the hassle of trying to pursue that.

As you have said, it seems very improbable that the electrician did see the rodent damage, since he would then surely have mentioned it, if not also done something about it. Hence, if you did try to pursue it, they would only have to withdraw their 'lie' (the boss probably saying that there had been 'a misunderstanding' between him and his electrician, or something like that) for your 'case' to disappear.

Kind Regards, John

 

[sparkymarka]

Just a point ....how do you know the rodents didn't do further damage since the visit 2 months ago ?

 

[swallet]

Well I don’t but repairing their damage has cured the original problem so one must conclude that said damage was present from the start.