Pat Testing question?

Try

------------------------------------------------- Ted Rubberford. 'The Man In The Green Latex Skintight Hood'

You will not find any law which mentions PAT testing. However, there are

4 Acts and Statutory Instruments which place various responsibilities on employers and workers, and PAT testing has been devised as a method to meet a number of the safety requirements in those Acts. If you can find some other way to meet those requirements, you are free to do that instead, but generally that will be difficult and pointless to invent some other scheme.

There is a C&G certificate in PAT testing, 2377/02 IIRC. Holders have demonstrated their competence to perform PAT testing (the HSE accepts this qualification for this purpose). Electricians are not normally trained in PAT testing, so you should ensure people undertaking PAT testing do have this certificate. There's also 2377/01 which covers management of PAT testing -- normally the two are taken together over two days. The qualification is intended to be attainable by those who are not electricians -- the prerequisit would be familiarity wiring plugs and understanding the difference between milliohms and megohms (which is something electricians on the course often have trouble with, sadly;-). In an office or a small company, it is a good idea to have someone who has done the two day training and holds the certificates, even if you subcontract the actual testing, although this would mean you can do it yourselves. If you do subcontract PAT testing, make sure the person(s) undertaking testing hold 2377/02 or you are likely to be wasting your money -- as I indicated before, simply being a qualified electrician or a member of a trade body doesn't really mean anything much with regards to PAT testing. BTW, it's usually quite easy to spot someone who doesn't know how to perform PAT testing -- they normally start by connecting the appliance under test to the PAT tester.

I think they all do, but not frequently.

That's always advisable, to protect yourself from being sued. This can happen even if you didn't do anything wrong. I am not aware of any legal requirement for it though.

Bilge! They have to be tested at a period dictated by the consistancy of the test results. Additional factors include any likely damage due to the environment or storage tha PAT tester is subject to.

Visual inspections should be immediately prior to use. Recorded visual inspections are,as with PAT testers usually based initially on the IEE reccomendations, but may be modified if justified by the "log".

Xmas tree lights do not require monthly inspection!!

HTH

HN

PAT machines have to be calibrated annually just like other test equipment and they should also have a monthly visual inspection which is recorded into a log book

Gavin

Yes portable equipment should be subject to visual proir to use as laid out in HSE guidelines. But PAT testers (machines may have been a wrongly confusing term) should be checked monthly against a known item. At work we use a test box to check all our test equipment monthly as required by NICEIC.

Gavin