No power in the shed - Would you do the electrical install yourself?

[Bobtail4x4]

As I have said before, I am a BCO we inspect these things, as due to the DIY numpties making things dangerous, enforcement came in,
windows came in due to window companies convincing people to have windows without proper openings for escape, so people died in fires etc, and the government decided to redude the Co2 emmisions by insisting on low E glass,

electrics came in 2005 also as the number of house fires caused by bodged wiring was huge,

Im fairly sure that 90% of the people on this forum could re wire a house, but its the other ten percent who think they can who worry me.

 

[bill_gj]

"A man's got to know his limitations" - Dirty Harry

 

[mileshc]

BT, I have to agree in many ways. I might say controversially that 90% of people OFF this forum are not capable. I still do not like the nanning state though, really don't.

I've been here now for 12months & prevented a house fire to the house next door, replaced the consumer unit, found burnt out wiring to the boiler feed, burnt main neutral to the old consumer unit & a spur in the kitchen which had been installed, thus disconnecting the ring main, this was allegedly done by a qualified person. That's what Sundays are for? I have also stopped another neighbour twice from a DIY horror & gently conducted & suggested other ways.

I am an OAF, but know it, as Bill alludes to, know thy self, but we are all capable of more than we realise if given or taking the time. The learning never ceases; until your dead?

Apologies, been at the wine, g&t & breathing way to much.

 

[steel doctor]

hi there i would do it myself i fit industrial doors/automatic gates and i do all the wireing myself as long as theres an isolator is **** easy any questions please ask

 

[bill_gj]

Pass the bottle mileshc. I'm with you.
I finished my engineering apprenticeship in 1971. Since then, there's been no stop to my 'learning' if you like, and I bet that's so with anyone that has an enlightened attitude.

If you're:
- a complete idiot
- a big-headed t#at
- an over-confident pillock that thinks it's all down to chocolate blocks and tape
- someome that has no fear of dying

....then you're the type of person that could claim to be 'an electrician' and get a job wiring up conservatories, kitchens, garden lighting, etc. Seems like many do.

My youngest son finished his C&G Electrical Installation (16th Edition) a couple of years ago and found difficulty getting any good work because employers want el-cheapo labour that APPEAR to be able to do the biz, and there's plenty of them about.
They don't want the mate's rate for the job, they want the top rate and are prepared to bull#hit their way through to the end of the contract, then go to the next job citing how well they've done at the current job.

Me - if I don't understand, I try to find out from those that do understand. If it's beyond me, then I'll get a proper professional in to do it to the book.

 

[MrFluffy]

As I have said before, I am a BCO we inspect these things, as due to the DIY numpties making things dangerous, enforcement came in,
windows came in due to window companies convincing people to have windows without proper openings for escape, so people died in fires etc, and the government decided to redude the Co2 emmisions by insisting on low E glass,

electrics came in 2005 also as the number of house fires caused by bodged wiring was huge,

Im fairly sure that 90% of the people on this forum could re wire a house, but its the other ten percent who think they can who worry me.

So with the above in mind, are you on favor of making it illegal for people to work on their own cars in case they do something silly unless they have been car maintenance certified?

 

[malcolm]

So with the above in mind, are you on favor of making it illegal for people to work on their own cars in case they do something silly unless they have been car maintenance certified?

It's not illegal for people to do their own electrics, just those electrics are now supposed to inspected afterwards. For some time we have a compulsory annual inspection for cars in the UK. Not that that saves us from every case of bad mechanicing, just hopefully catches some of them once a year.

I don't think either system is perfect.

 

[Bobtail4x4]

you beat me to it,

I work on my own car, I work on my own house electrics, technically I am not a "competant person" but if I get stuck I ask someone to check things,

The amount of half wits I see on a daily basis would scare most of you, engineering seems to have reduced the numpties to labourours, in the building trade anyone with the price od a brick trowel and hopefully a level seems to set up as a builder.

and then people employ them as they are cheap???

one job I saw last week they had cut through floor joists from 150mm leaving only 50mm left.
rather than drill the nutral axis to run a pipe?

 

[Wedg1e]

Hey, don't be kidding yourselves that the monkeys are only to be found in the home. I recently got called out to fix a problem with a £50,000 x-ray set I'd not long since installed at a certain factory near Leeds. Of course it was 'my' x-ray set that was at fault, couldn't be anything they'd done, oh no.
Once I'd repaired all the damage I could find and got the system to power-up again, as soon as I pressed the start botton it went pop again, total loss of mains. Checked all the fuses: still intact. Eh? what the hell? Poked a meter in there and was getting the most ludicrous voltage readings off a 3-phase supply I've ever seen.
Traced back to the overhead busbar, pulled the pluggable fusebox off and ripped it apart. Turned out that when I installed the system and asked for power, the plant electricians (subbies, I might add) had found the fusebox in stores with a 'Faulty' label on it, ripped the label off and installed it anyway. The problem proved to be an arced neutral, one piddling grub screw not screwed down so the netral wasn't making contact properly.
Of course we had to do it as a freebie in good grace, we'd like to sell them some more systems...

Some memorable callouts I've had over the years due to so-called skilled plant maintenance guys unable to find (or be bothered to look for) the simplest defect: Teesside to Gloucester to replace a fuse; Worcester to reset a circuit breaker and this morning's slippery slog, 140 mile round trip to change a lightbulb (xray set won't work unless all the warning lamps are intact).
Then there was the vessel makers in Co. Monaghan who dragged me over there to tell them what they already knew: one of their guys had tripped and dropped a £13K x-ray head, smashing it. They were spitting blood because I didn't happen to carry a spare one in my toolcase...
I might also mention the research facility who phoned up in a panic because their system wouldn't work: when I got there it wouldn't work alright, mostly because the keys were in the pocket of someone on holiday...

 

[Robotstar5]

Some memorable callouts I've had over the year

My favourite (?) was a trip from Milton Keynes to Cannock to flick a switch to the correct position - "nobody touched it" inside a locked control cabinet!
Cost the company a big callout charge

 

[snowcat]

It's not illegal for people to do their own electrics, just those electrics are now supposed to inspected afterwards. For some time we have a compulsory annual inspection for cars in the UK. Not that that saves us from every case of bad mechanicing, just hopefully catches some of them once a year.

I don't think either system is perfect.

Hmmmm where do you stand then on welding?, theres zero inspection, and anyone can call them selfs a welder, an inspection system thats ermmm more complex than IMF, and loopholes that you could lose the space shuttle down...

one of our local welding suppliers, has a whole list of accidents caused by in his words "weekend welders"..........

Now thats a loaded question for you....

 

[steel doctor]

Pass the bottle mileshc. I'm with you.
I finished my engineering apprenticeship in 1971. Since then, there's been no stop to my 'learning' if you like, and I bet that's so with anyone that has an enlightened attitude.

If you're:
- a complete idiot
- a big-headed t#at
- an over-confident pillock that thinks it's all down to chocolate blocks and tape
- someome that has no fear of dying

....then you're the type of person that could claim to be 'an electrician' and get a job wiring up conservatories, kitchens, garden lighting, etc. Seems like many do.
i fully understand electrics and its not ilegal to do them yourself and get a cert afterwards! i have certs in electrics! your son probley carnt get work because hes not good enough or charges high rates i know lots of sparkeys and there never out of work!!!!!!!!!!!! and i never said i do it for a living it only a small part of my job !!!

 

[malcolm]

Hmmmm where do you stand then on welding?, theres zero inspection, and anyone can call them selfs a welder, an inspection system thats ermmm more complex than IMF, and loopholes that you could lose the space shuttle down...

one of our local welding suppliers, has a whole list of accidents caused by in his words "weekend welders"..........

Now thats a loaded question for you....

That is a very loaded question. Well done

For properly done professional welding there are plenty of checks and balances available for anything that needs things to be done properly, and the driver to use them seems to be product liability laws. Works to an extent - a friend was given a new van recently. Dealer wouldn't let him have the old one back as it seems they had forgotten to weld it together in all the normal places. In my experience people who make nuclear power stations also seem to be keen on doing lots of weld tests.

Weekend welders! Are you a UKW member talking about DIY welders? I have you down as a reasonable person so you must be thinking about poor welders who weld badly for a living. There is a difference - we get the DIY types on here and they seem to be people who want to learn, improve, and generally want to do things well.

For people who do bad welding for a living there is a problem sometimes. I've recently had to advise a poor Belgian about how to recover his chassis from some welding efforts he paid for. I find that really sad as there's much more work to do now than there would have been when it was just rusty.

I don't know what can be done about that sort of thing other than some system of advice and recommendations that would hopefully keep the bad guys out of business. In this case if inspections had to be paid for my Belgian friend would have been even more out of pocket when he found his chassis was bad.

If you can get hold of the list of the weekend welder disasters please PM me - would be interesting.

 

[Wedg1e]

If it wasn't for the inspection of welds (amongst other things) I wouldn't have a job
However the inspection industry has had its fair share of cowboy operators: the classic one used to be pretending to have performed ultrasonic inspections by smearing couplant all over the workpiece and drawing two fingers through it to make it look as though a probe had been used. Then there are various tricks you can do with x-ray to hide (or rather, 'fail to show') defects... and the time-honoured dodge when doing repetitive work especially on big spools: shoot the same weld over and over again just changng the ident. numbers on the film.

 

[bill_gj]

Wifey tells me that I am too critical of my own work (it translates to 'why isn't it finished yet' with respect to decorating and woodwork, etc.)

I'm sure that many of the corespondents here are similar. When you know the difference between a well done job and a bodge, it's hard to accomodate the bodge.
I mentioned the 'that'll do' brigade in another post and they're the ones that b#gger it up for types that want to develop their (amateur) skills, what ever the field is.

I never really understood the attitude of the professional bodge artists - once the word gets around, surely their business collapses?

 

[MrFluffy]

I never really understood the attitude of the professional bodge artists - once the word gets around, surely their business collapses?

It takes ages sometimes, and with some syncophants who they know or are in their circle of friends, it can take years.
EVENTUALLY it might catch them up some years later, by which time theyve made a packet, packed up and moved somewhere nicer anyway, with a nice fresh pool of cannon fodder to punt to.

Snowy, if you think the welding world is a mess of certifications, you want to try IT, I have *no* qualifications or certifications but a lot of experience with well known corporate clients, and the few times Ive been involved with recruiting if someone comes into the interview and trys to push their quals instead of real world experience, their cv goes into the bin shortly after they leave the room because I know how laughable the certifications actually are, the trouble is the resourcing depts are normally staffed by people who did a accountancy course so just scan for keywords. Which is why IT projects end up as such train wrecks normally...

Can someone bring back evolution instead of legislation please?

 

[snowcat]

That is a very loaded question. Well done

For properly done professional welding there are plenty of checks and balances available for anything that needs things to be done properly, and the driver to use them seems to be product liability laws. Works to an extent - a friend was given a new van recently. Dealer wouldn't let him have the old one back as it seems they had forgotten to weld it together in all the normal places. In my experience people who make nuclear power stations also seem to be keen on doing lots of weld tests.

Weekend welders! Are you a UKW member talking about DIY welders? I have you down as a reasonable person so you must be thinking about poor welders who weld badly for a living. There is a difference - we get the DIY types on here and they seem to be people who want to learn, improve, and generally want to do things well.

For people who do bad welding for a living there is a problem sometimes. I've recently had to advise a poor Belgian about how to recover his chassis from some welding efforts he paid for. I find that really sad as there's much more work to do now than there would have been when it was just rusty.

I don't know what can be done about that sort of thing other than some system of advice and recommendations that would hopefully keep the bad guys out of business. In this case if inspections had to be paid for my Belgian friend would have been even more out of pocket when he found his chassis was bad.

If you can get hold of the list of the weekend welder disasters please PM me - would be interesting.

Next time I'm in Elmdale IL get the run down.....

Again the test system is only as good as the guys testing and the joke is someone like me is, wrights the procedure, checks the prep, does the job then signs it off, ....and I know plenty in the same boat...

Bad welders/ weekend welders, hmmmm Iv seen some dreadful work, and to be fair, most DIY'rs are working on a project and want to create a decent job at the end, however most Garages who weld cars don't, I have yet managed to understand what welding 2" of scrap onto a rotten fiesta cross member will actually do to make it safer? and thats if you can call the weld a weld its just terrible, Iv seen it across the board right up to structual......


Cowboys I guess are about in all trades..... the trouble is Job A is to weld up a 15 year old montego to get it through the test, Job B is closed root TIG to Nuclear standard and somehow, the word welder blurs everything into one....

 

[English Steve]

the word welder blurs everything into one....

As does the word Engineer

 

[ben8vgte]

I never really understood the attitude of the professional bodge artists - once the word gets around, surely their business collapses?

the conservatorie company i've recently worked for were professional bodger's (the owner's not so much the staff) 10 years they have been trading, but by the time it all fall's down around them, they will be in there 2nd or 3rd homes oversea's in sun. w****rs

 

[bill_gj]

Yea, those sort really get my anger going.
If you have enough front, I suppose you can take it right to the edge. Confidence and b#llshit will often win over caution and knowledge.