snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com said the following on 12/01/2007 10:05:
And therein lies the catch. Joe Public is not suitably qualified and wouldn't know what paperwork to issue if it was plonked in front of them. Joe Public is still going to do the work regardless.
Yes, they should. But they won't, especially when the word "fee" is mentioned.
So at the end of the day, regardless of any rules and regulations, DIY electrical work will still be done by unqualified people with no certification, as it has been for decades. And a significant proportion of that will simply be down to Joe Public just carrying on as they always have done, in blissful ignorance of what is actually required!
Oh, I agree. I hate Part P but just wanted to point out (OK I was being pedantic) that DIY is still allowed. One side effect is that those who don't want to/can't DIY will get in the cowboys to avoid having to pay the extra fees.
The whole premise of the regulations is crap since there are approaching zero fatalities due to faulty fixed wiring. Another side effect is that instead of paying to have extra sockets installed properly people will use more and more trailing extension leads which will lead to more deaths and injuries that will be ascribed to electrical faults (ie we couldn't figure out the real cause, guv). Allegedly it's all down to one MPs daughter who was electrocuted by touching a towel rail that had been badly installed such that the fixings had pierced a mains cable in the wall. Never mind that far more people (but it's still a very small number in the scheme of things) die due to faulty appliances, overloaded flexes, etc.
Yes and so it should be, this is just another example of the nanny state takiung control.
I suspect the real problem now though is that schools no-longer provide
*useful* eduction including basic life skills. When I attended Technical High School in the 60s we were taught basic fundamentals such as fitting plugs and basic wiring, along with soldering and the like - now of course they wouldn't dare do this in case someone accused them of giving out wrong information and ended up suing the school.
Where will it all end up, and how long before you need your local authority to check the wiring on your model railway?
John Turner said the following on 12/01/2007 12:52:
I hope I carefully avoided expressing any opinion on whether I thought it was a good thing or a bad thing. I'm with you, and we'll be doing our own 3-phase wiring. I do at least know we aren't supposed to!
I would assume they're still taught how to fit plugs, surely! If the aim of the regulations are to make electrickery safer, then surely common sense says that such a basic thing as fitting a plug should be done properly, and therefore must be taught to ensure people know how to do it properly. Whoops - I had 'common sense' and 'regulations' in the same sentence there!
Well - one thing that has always crossed my mind is whether model railways at exhibitions are checked. The reason for that is that at one exhibition I saw some very dodgy mains wiring hanging out of a wooden box. As far as layouts at home though, don't even drop any hints about needing local authority approval. :-)
I believe all domestic appliances must now be sold with a plug top fitted - so you might find some arguing that there's no need to know how to fit one properly.
Paul Boyd wrote in news:45a7878e$0$8724$ snipped-for-privacy@ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net:
I thought it was all because Prescott had been bribed by the big electrical contractors who are cleaning up because of Part P just in the same way as he has been allegedly bribed by the big building firms to allow unrestricted building on every last blade of grass in the country.
I?m sure one of us is right.
In the meantime I have a very large collection of older cables, even including some old grey sheathed cable ... and I shall of course continue to use it up as I see fit.
Actually as we're chatting about silly side effects of this stupid legislation heres an example from my own stable.
I've wired up the back garden, I had previously set aside a rcb circuit breaker in the consumer unit to enable a seperate ring and of course obtained the necessary armoured cable and outdoor fittings. So far so good. Meanwhile the regulations changed - so rather than pay for an inspection I've sidestepped the regulations. My back garden electricts all now come out of a standard 13A socket via what is essentially a plug-in extension cable run through a door frame. Under the regs as an extension cable it is perfectly legal and doesn't require certification.
Bodge job = OK, proper job but to tight fisted to pay for certification OK.
This effing gvt can't do anything right - except of course squeeze more and more money out of a declining employed population.
B&Q produce a leaflet, though, which is quite helpful.
Modern split-level cookers now arrive with a 13-amp plug fitted to each section, so you can just plug 'em in to the relevant socket. New houses/newly rewired houses have the sockets fitted. What happens in an older house with a 30-amp switch/13-amp socket, I don't know - my cooker is fairly recent so I won't need to find out for a few years yet.
Ain't nostalgia grand? Stand on a chair, remove light bulb, push in bayonet adaptor, switch on light, switch on vacuum cleaner. Switch off vacuum cleaner, climb back onto chair, remove bayonet adaptor, insert bulb - and then drop bulb because bulb lights up in hand...
Happened regularly in our house. There was only one 5-amp socket, and that was used for the radio. No other plug sockets anywhere else in the house. Compare that with today: there's a bloke with a shovel at Fidlers Ferry Power Station on stand-by for when my son turns his room on!
I wasn't just this government that created electrical legislation - I can remember my late father (who was an electrician) going on about new legislation 30 - 40 years ago :-)
And what happens if it's wired into a sealed box, which legally you cannot open? It's easier to wire on a new plug, especially as where wires do break it is generally near where it exits the original plug.
Yup, but you've still got to wire them and add a plug.
If they did people would simply moan that they were wasting time on "life skills" when they should be teaching proper stuff like the 11 times table and not splitting infinitives.... :-)
When I attended Technical
More to the point, these days virtually everything a normal person is likely to want comes with a moulded-on plug. In the unlikely even it somehow breaks, it is probably just as easy and cheap to buy a new wire+plug as a new plug. Now things like washers and computers are seen as pretty much throw-away items, binning a bit of wire is a no problem. I've probably got a few sat here on my shelves.
Heck, I can't remember the last time I needed to change a plug, and I'm the sort of tight-fisted sad anorak who might do so.
Actually, it's more like insurance companies taking control. The more risky things people do, the more the companies have to pay. The health insurance companies are especially eager to reduce the risks of injury. In the US, that's aggravated by the litigiousness of the average Merkin. So don't blame gummint - pols just do what their masters want 'em to do.
As for publicly paid portion of health care: I for one don't see why a large chunk of my taxes should go to pay for the injuries suffered by idjits who don't know what they're doing, or insist on their "right" not to wear seat belts, and such. Not to mention the social welfare costs incurred because some idjit's stoopid death has left a destitute widow and orphans.
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