restricted electrical works

paddymick

Well i asked earlier if another contractor came and changed a socket, what happpens with the insurance then. There was no clear answer given.

Post #83

If they got a registered contractor in to fix the problem, the original one got away with it anyway,

Yes but its at this stage that the homeowner should have done something if they were intending on making the original contractor accountable.

The only way they wouldnt of got away with it according to your post, would be if there was an injury or worse

.
No because they obviously had a problem which is why I assume you had to look at it for them so in other words without any "injury or worse" your attention was drawn to a potentially dangerous situation and this is when they should have done something to make the first guy sort it out.

How would anyone prove the original contractor left the cable nailed anyway?
But they could claim anyone did that after them. Im sure their cert says infinity on the meggar test, which it wouldnt with a nail in fresh plaster into a live conductor.

Thats why I said earlier things are hard to prove

Bruthal

paddymick wrote: »

No because they obviously had a problem which is why I assume you had to look at it for them so in other words without any "injury or worse" your attention was drawn to a potentially dangerous situation and this is when they should have done something to make the first guy sort it out.

They had no problem materialise from it, i found the problem through testing the circuit. And rectified it to a professional standard. The neighbour had fitted new socket plates himself and asked me to look at them before he screwed them up.

You well know, proving the first contractors are at fault would be extremely difficult even if an accident occured. With no accident, the best course was to rectify.

Anyway, i was within the proposed rules. I wired no new circuit. I did however, test the circuit from the board, which was how i found the problem. This was before the proposed change anyway. So was it ok to do it then, but not now?

At the end of the day, it was likely apprentices that did the wiring. And the contractor certified, without even seeing it. So there is a lot of other stuff to fix, which is proof this new rule is simply jobs for the boys.

Bruthal

cast_iron wrote: »

If it wasn't spotted fairly soon after the job was done, then that would be that really. That's just one of those things that after time, proving it becomes impossible.

I know we all see cowboy work, but i cant actually imagine the contractor himself leaving it like it was. Id say it was apprentice, or electrician, under the boom time pressure to do a house a day, did a quick fix when the rcd and mcb tripped with live to earth short, and onto next house.

liveandnetural

well here my two cents worth
what happens when a rec retires or goes out of business what happens to the insurance cover then .in my local area in the last three years six contractors have stopped trading (one died two retired two went to Australia and ones farming ) .now one of them did a estate with 120 houses in it and used poor quality cooker and shower switch's which are burring out at rate of one a week (great for me) but hes gone from the trade now so where the insurance cover now!!!

meercat

liveandnetural wrote: »

well here my two cents worth
what happens when a rec retires or goes out of business

hes gone from the trade now so where the insurance cover now!!!

On the insurance issue
I believe cover stops when you cease trading
The cover is not retrospective which means even if you had insurance when the work was done and a problem arose in the future,no cover is provided if your not currently insured
A directive was issued to rec to ask them to maintain cover if they cease trading to cover this eventuality

2011

meercat wrote: »

A directive was issued to rec to ask them to maintain cover if they cease trading to cover this eventuality

That is all well and good but I would think that most RECs that cease trading do so due to an inability to pay creditors. Therefore they the chances of being able to pay for insurance for a company no longer trading slim to say the least. The money would have to come from personal saving that may not even exist. The benifits to the (perhaps) now out of work former REC are hard to see.

I think that this will be another impossible to police idea.

M cebee

Yes there was a notice about retaining insurance

But not many would

Carlow52

meercat wrote: »

On the insurance issue
I believe cover stops when you cease trading
The cover is not retrospective which means even if you had insurance when the work was done and a problem arose in the future,no cover is provided if your not currently insured
A directive was issued to rec to ask them to maintain cover if they cease trading to cover this eventuality

the insurance issue is interesting in so far as its the terms of cover in place at the date of claim that matter, not the cover when the work was done.

suppose in 2005 u did industrial work and have cover.
then
suppose in 2011 u only have cover for domestic and a claim arises from the 2005 work.

U are not covered

2011

M cebee wrote: »

Yes there was a notice about retaining insurance

For how long?

But not many would

Yeah, I wouldn't think so.

I remember being told (I think it was on a 1/2 day RECI training course) that you could be held criminally liable for the consequences of substandard/dangerous workmanship for up to 7 years.

2011

Carlow52 wrote: »

the insurance issue is interesting in so far as its the terms of cover in place at the date of claim that matter, not the cover when the work was done.

suppose in 2005 u did industrial work and have cover.
then
suppose in 2011 u only have cover for domestic and a claim arises from the 2005 work.

U are not covered

I did not know that there were different types of cover for domestic and industrial.
My own cover is for up to €2,600,000 regardless of domestic, commercial or industrial.

sprk

what a crock!!!!!!

every ones unemployed but its still okey to just do a nixer?
im not saying that when i was an apprentice i dident do small nixers extra socket , connect cooker etc etc but there are people out there who clearly think its okey to wire a house as a "nixer" while i have to be insured, pay stamps , do training courses, have regular inspections,and pay for upkeep of my meggers etc,

with regard to some of the recent replys if you carry out any work on an installation you are required by law to issue either a full cert or minor completion cert;.

i dont think any one is saying if your an electrician you should be locked up for putting in an extra socket in your own house, you should be educated enough to understand what your doing with lack pof insurance etc

and while im on it for pig iron if you did a nixer in a neighbours house say an extra socket and two weeks later your neighbour thought i can do that and spured off with one more resulting in the house burning down how can you with no insurance of set standards with paperwork prove it wasent your fault you cant and could be held personably liable

to sum it up this thread is just another example of the crap mentallity of the majority of this country blame it on somebody else instead of having abit of social responsibility:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

2011

i dont think any one is saying if your an electrician you should be locked up for putting in an extra socket in your own house, you should be educated enough to understand what your doing with lack pof insurance etc

Actually you are incorrect.

They are saying that a qualified electrician should not be permitted to add an extra socket to their own home unless they are a registered electrical contractor.

Bruthal

sprk wrote: »

what a crock!!!!!!

every ones unemployed but its still okey to just do a nixer?
im not saying that when i was an apprentice i dident do small nixers extra socket , connect cooker etc etc but there are people out there who clearly think its okey to wire a house as a "nixer" while i have to be insured, pay stamps , do training courses, have regular inspections,and pay for upkeep of my meggers etc,

with regard to some of the recent replys if you carry out any work on an installation you are required by law to issue either a full cert or minor completion cert;.

i dont think any one is saying if your an electrician you should be locked up for putting in an extra socket in your own house, you should be educated enough to understand what your doing with lack pof insurance etc

and while im on it for pig iron if you did a nixer in a neighbours house say an extra socket and two weeks later your neighbour thought i can do that and spured off with one more resulting in the house burning down how can you with no insurance of set standards with paperwork prove it wasent your fault you cant and could be held personably liable

to sum it up this thread is just another example of the crap mentallity of the majority of this country blame it on somebody else instead of having abit of social responsibility:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

So you did "nixers yourself, as an apprentice, but in the same paragraph, mention that others are doing whole rewires, but later you say qualified electricians cant add in a socket. A big pile of confusing rubbish.

Dan Jaman

Well, stuff the lot of them. I'm not interested in what those gobsheets say - I'm carrying on and doing my own stuff, in my own house, for the next few years until I get it to a high enough standard to satisfy me.
I've been plumbing and electrifying my own building of the pas 13 years, on and off, and have a fairly sound technical knowledge. Also, I 'm not exactly a stranger to doing it for money over teh years. I've now effectively retired from the game, but still have all my tools, kit, and lots of raw materials, so will just carry on at my own place.
I didn't realise that I'd suddenly become 'incopetent' to do this work - I take that as a right slap in the face an the whole scheme stinks as protectionism and exactly what the trade bodies in the UK managed to get introduced in ~2006 over there, under the guise of Part P.
The Irish regulators must have been watching like hawks to see if such blatant protectionism would work. It does, up to a point, but I'm happy to see that most competent diyers over there just ignore the law and get on with their own work, perfectly safely.

micks

sprk wrote: »

what a crock!!!!!!

every ones unemployed but its still okey to just do a nixer?
im not saying that when i was an apprentice i dident do small nixers extra socket , connect cooker etc etc but there are people out there who clearly think its okey to wire a house as a "nixer" while i have to be insured, pay stamps , do training courses, have regular inspections,and pay for upkeep of my meggers etc,

with regard to some of the recent replys if you carry out any work on an installation you are required by law to issue either a full cert or minor completion cert;.

i dont think any one is saying if your an electrician you should be locked up for putting in an extra socket in your own house, you should be educated enough to understand what your doing with lack pof insurance etc

and while im on it for pig iron if you did a nixer in a neighbours house say an extra socket and two weeks later your neighbour thought i can do that and spured off with one more resulting in the house burning down how can you with no insurance of set standards with paperwork prove it wasent your fault you cant and could be held personably liable

to sum it up this thread is just another example of the crap mentallity of the majority of this country blame it on somebody else instead of having abit of social responsibility:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Would you get another contractor to carry out work in your own house?
Your insurance will not cover you for work in your own property as you cannot claim against yourself

Irish Steve

OK, I will probably get flamed from here to I don't know where and back, but this is my 2c worth.

All of this is b****locks, and it's got damn all to do with health and safety, and everything to do with reintroducing restrictive practises by the back door. It was rife years ago in the UK, and then it got killed off by Government, and now, it's creeping in again, under the disguise of Health and Safety, or under some other crackpot scheme regulated by yet another specialist body.

I'm close to retiring age, and over the years, my background has been installing and maintaining large computer systems, then all manner of other areas of computing, but in the installing side, I had to get them working, and that included making sure the power side was OK, which could mean some fairly large distribution boards, among other things.

When I did my training, you didn't get a certificate, if you failed the course, you were looking for another job, simple! I can well remember one time that for the "sin" of fitting a 13A plug on to an electronic desktop calculator, we nearly had the entire workforce of Westland Helicopters out on official strike. Yes, it was that bad, and it's starting to go the same way again.

I've wired my own property, and plumbed it, including gas, and had it certified, and subesquently also had to sort out the absolute shambles left behind by a registered sparks that supposedly wired up our new house in Ashbourne a few years (like 20) ago. The sort of things that I had to deal with were lights that didn't switch off because they were wired wrong, lights that didn't have earth wires put in to the switch boxes, and the most laughable, the total mess of the central heating, I gave him the complete circuit for wiring up the control box, it had a 3A fuse in the box to protect all the circuits, and there was a lot of interwiring of the different components. He gave up half way through, probably because he was having problems putting in the jumper wires, which might have been something to do with his use of 1.5 solid for the interconnect jumpers. I ended up ripping all of them out, and rewiring them in .5 flexible, and got it working.

When I had a 3 phase standby generator going in here at the house, I ended up doing it myself, as I couldn't get an acceptable price for installing the automatic changeover interlocked contactors that were needed to protect the incoming supply lines, and that included putting in the automatic changeover panel that monitors the supply and starts the genset in the event of a supply failure, puts it on line, and then shuts down the gen set once the supply has been restored. Most of the people I spoke to didn't even understand what I was trying to do, and didn't even bother quoting.

ESB came out and inspected it, and were completely happy.

Now, it's getting to the stage where you have to have a registration and certification to use a chemical bog on a building site, and in some cases, that's about the best use for some of these supposed certificates too.

Yes, there are cowboys out there, but in some cases, they've got the certifications, or more likely are selling them to their mates, and the rest of the nonsense, so they carry on as before, still doing lousy jobs and getting away with it, and the ONLY answer is that the inspection and certification has to be done in a way that if the job is substandard, it WILL be found out, and the people responsible dealt with in a way that makes them change their ways, and having regulatory systems that charge a fortune for a certificate is NOT the answer. Nor is having rules that are unenforceable.

I know I can put an alarm in that meets every requirement in terms of certification, it's not rocket science, but if I do that now, there are all manner of enforcement actions that can be taken against me, and to get licensed to become legal is a complete non starter unless I am going to spend all my time just doing alarms, which I'm not. Now electrical work is going the same way, and soon, all that will happen is that it will be even harder for some businesses to get support in a timely manner.

Take a restaurant for example. They have a problem, but they don't know what's wrong, all they know is that something is not working right. In a minute, we're going to have a situation where they won't be able to get someone with the right piece of paper for possibly 2 or 3 days, and that's not going to be acceptable to them, if they call in someone to do a repair, they want it fixed. Changing a CB on a panel is not rocket science, and in most restaurants, they are 3 phase, so have to be treated with more care. In extreme cases, the CB ends up being changed live line, as it's not possible to switch the board off because of the cost of doing so to the business.

For me, the issue is that I'm becoming increasingly annoyed by the nanny state attitude that is introducing more and more legislation, rules and licences to protect people from things that realistically are nothing to do with the state, and everything to do with people being personally responsible for the decisions they make.

The state can't decide who is or is not a good tradesperson, that's down to reputation, and things like references, and has very little to do with which piece of paper that tradesperson might have, or not have as the case may be, and spending money on TV advertising to try and promote trade bodies is not the answer. I'd rather see the trade body spending that money on doing follow up inspections of the work done by it's members, and creating a register that Joe Public can access on line to see the result of those followup checks, and that's going to do far more to root out the rubbish than any amount of licensing.

If I do a lousy job, and there's a way for people to make that known, I'm not going to last long, and the opposite is true, if I do a good job, then that too will help make sure that the word spreads.

Too many of the state and related regulations are effectively preventing people from doing an honest job for a reasonable return. I can't afford to be spending over €6K for a licence that will allow me to install the occasional alarm as part of a larger job, and I don't see why I should have to put out that sort of money for occasional work.

Now in a minute, I won't be able to do work in other areas, not because I don't have the skills, but because someone somewhere that's probably never done a days work at the sharp end has decided that I don't have the right piece of paper, or more to the point, I'm not paying the right subscription to the right club to be allowed to work.

Yeah, most of you will probably write me off as a grumpy old git that doesn't know what he's talking about, but I know what I know, and what I know is that if it gets to the stage where I have to get a licensed electrician in to fit a socket in my own home, look out, because I will be the antichrist incarnate, simply because the way that too many trades are now being regulated is the wrong way, and all that's doing is driving out the people that have the "natural" skills, and letting in the people that can only do the job "by the book", and there never will be a book that covers all situations.

Those that can, DO.
Those that can't, teach.
Those that can't teach, teach teachers.
Those that can't teach teachers end up working for regulators, or trade unions, or semi states, or become politicians.

Hasanyone else noticed that a significant majority of the last group produce nothing that's of direct benefit to the economy, in most cases, they are a direct cost that the people in the lists above them end up having to carry.

And then we wonder why we're in the mess we're in!