Curious fault #1 

Yes that Fred King is creating headaches for so many people irrespective of what profession they are in. And Someone Else is always allocated jobs that No one including F. King want to do. Who put Someone else on the PayRoll in the first place, and why is it when we want someone else to do the job he cannot be located. Maybe taking a day odd sick?

I can see exactly where your coming from there. I was working as an electrician, with all the relevant documentation, for a local outfit, their workmanship was shoddy at best, some of the retards would work live hanging off ladders. Then my final straw came when the boss of the firm told me to wire up outside bollard lights in heavy rain, and i just told him to get f**ked.

@@jontownsend8090 fair play buddy. I would have done the same. Why I'm self employed so I can be in control across the board 👌

a lot of the councils are like that too they just want you to get things working even though you know it needs a complete replacement doing on a particular installation then when something goes wrong they blame the attending electrician when you were only following there instructions like you said they have no idea what's involved that why im glad im out of it too, i saw some shocking ccu's and was expected to sort them out in 1hr. its no wonder the standards have gone down they just don't care until they get egg on there faces

Gotta love plumbers! I think they were part of the old kitchen and decommissioned. Not actually sure where they would have gone to in that cupboard!

Wow that's handy I might offer to fit a sink and maybe a loo :-)

I laughed too

its so the sparkys can make themselves a cuppa while there working :-D

That's in case the earth loop impedance test comes back a bit high

wHAT IS THE NAME OF THE LITTLE DEVICE HE HAS ATTACHED TO THE CABLE THAT IS MEASURING THE VOLTS OR THE AMPS?

It's a clamp meter, a Handyman TEK775, although it's available under other brand names and model numbers.

@@dsesuk; thank you.

Wouldn't it be from induction created by other live cables?

@@dsesuk nice bit of kit for only £70

Note : most nuisance tripping is a neutral fault since the PD neutral/earth is variable depending on the imbalance on the 3-phases. This means the current flow is small and variable and may or may-not be above the RCCD trip current . It can be guaranteed that this trip current is below the threshold when the electrician visits.

Smart meter? Hahahahaha - the biggest con going in utilities.

Smart Meter?? You should be smarter than that.

I am in total agreeance Bob. I have Degrees in Electronics Engineering and Electro-Mechanical Engineering. Graduating in 1969 (Sydney University) and worked for PHILIPS at the time. Followed by 20 years Military Service from January 1970.

Since 2011, I have noticed part p aka part qualified electrical, fully qualified chippies, kitchen fitters, diy bob, brickies, have a go heros, landlords, as long as there are more certs being paid for, more money for the nic etc, from five to three providers, its about the money,

A refurb using the existing pyro?

Exactly my thought.

8:07 - "They've had some building work done here lately".

But would they have interfered with the tails... Surely no gland where the tails enter the CU and the bare copper where they enter the meter would have been done on the original install? As far as the rats nest of cables, sometimes there's not enough existing cable to be able to dress the CU as neatly as one would like.

Sods law isn't it?

I havnt heard of this new rule what clause is it?

You've got to love those nuisance trips! I had a nice easy one today where a bit of poking around uncovered an electric towel radiator with a leak, but we had one last week that just wasn't manifesting itself at all while on site - so probably another spin cycle job! I fully agree that all the CPS operators have their share of good and bad, and none of them are at all bothered about taking members to task even when the evidence is right under their noses. As the QS for a two-man band, I find it frustrating that I have to justify myself and my work on my assessments, yet I can go to any new build house wired by a big NICEIC Approved Contractor and find a whole list of non-compliance's because the wiring work was all done by apprentices and labourers, and the company QS will be signing it off without looking at it or inviting their assessor anywhere near it. I guess they keep the odd 'show home' handy for such purposes. I do wonder sometimes if I should quit the whole CPS thing, market myself as 'independent of expensive and ineffectual accrediting bodies', and simply ignore Part-P as there is seemingly no comeback whatsoever for failing to notify LABC of domestic work!

I'm an emergency call out electrician for the company I work for and i see washer faults all the time if you speak to the customer and ask what equipment was running at the time of the fault occurring you will find out best part of the time it's the spin cycle or drain cycle on the washing machine or dish washer had it many times before. Also there is nothing wrong with split load consumer units as long as you segregate, balance and take diversity into account when planning or installing a new consumer unit. Having a full rcbo consumer unit is the best way forward but cost is the main factor when planning installations and RCBO is over kill on some installations. I've always said cost on saftey should never be brought into the equation but using a split load consumer unit is perfectly satisfactory they wouldn't make them otherwise. When working on installations with TT system these are usually the only installations i fit a full Rcbo units.

@@asamitchell7948 A lot of people get sniffy about split load boards and their inherent non-compliance with Regulation 314 (division of installation) because an earth fault on one circuit will trip the RCD and take out other non-faulty circuits, so it's interesting to see 18th Edition introduce Reg 531.3.5.2 specifically stating a single RCD can protect multiple circuits. As you say, full RCBO is best, but for most clients it's like spending money on car tyres - they know it's essential, but they want it to hit their wallet as lightly as possible even if it may be a false economy in the longer term!

They might of had additions since the install/swap

Mass of earth I think you'll find

When the capping is made from 'METAL' of any kind it needs to be earthed.

@Jules Moules Thank you. I will look into it.

It's the same here, 'prescribed zones' is what we call them, although it still took me a while to figure out that one of these clips was the culprit!

I've done that once before, and documented what happened on my website. www.dses.co.uk/index.php/personal-blog/146-cowboy-competition-4 - to save you reading it, they came, they saw and they didn't give a damn.

Yeah I was about to say that it stands for microwaves emitting warning

Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely *not* saying there is anything wrong with NAPIT sparkies, and I myself was with them from 2012-2016. I left them because they keep rubber-stamping some very bad installers in this area. They sully their own brand by green-lighting installers who are plain bad as opposed to just lazy. That's why I jumped ship to NIC - not that they're necessarily any better, but I couldn't stick with NAPIT when they were torpedoing their own name on my doorstep.

Nice

Yeah. It's little to do with which governing body installers are affiliated to in my opinion. It's all down to the individual. Personally, I couldn't walk away from a job that wasn't correct. Even if I accidentally botched something, say, I slipped with the cutters and nicked a cable, I'd have to put it right. Not everybody's like that. There's a saying up North; 'Be reet!' That's said when you know full well it's not a tip top job, but it still works. 'Hey! What about the rubber grommets on the back boxes?' 'Oh... (it'll) be reet'. Well... it WON'T 'be reet'. I was once Fork Lift Truck instructor many moons ago, and I was commissioned to train up existing FLT drivers in house because of new rules that had come in. One guy, Steve his name was, passed with just two penalty points. Bear in mind that 40 penalty points was still a 'Pass'. Anyway, I was well impressed. He was stoked. The very next day I saw him doing pull ups on the raised forks of a loaded truck. I shouts over to him... 'What the hell are you doing?' 'What's up? I've got my license now!!', he says. I tell you... if I COULD HAVE, I would've recinded his license there and then. Same thing I guess; they prove that they can meet the necessary standard and then revert to being a plonker.

Bunch of damn glory hunters. I keep pointing out that NAPIT and NICEIC follow the same rules, I think people think these organisations are rule makers, they are not. They simply set the standards and best practices. NO ELECTRICIAN NEEDS TO JOIN EITHER OF THEM, but it is cheaper than paying the local planning officers hundreds of pound each time you wire a property.

Been with nic for a while, they're terrible. I'm giving napit a go this year. Customers don't have flipping a clue about electrical governing bodies anyway so what's the point paying money for old rope.

How does that work if all the breakers are off? There should be no power leaving the consumer unit.

Interesting, I hear that things are more ordered in France and Germany. Double-pole isolation is coming in more, and the new breed of short form factor RCBO's from the likes of Hager and Crabtree are double-pole unlike previous incarnations. They also lack the earth flylead for easier installation. I guess there'll be more of that as split-load boards start falling out of favour with the RCBO alternatives dropping in price and now being less of a faff to install.

Tableau electrified legrand installation

In this scenario and in properties in the uk except TT earthing arrangements neutral and earth are at the same potential .

The loop was closed by the nail, from neutral to earth (earth being the capping, walls etc)

I don't find it likely that since December 2015 it would have been reconfigured in such a major way. It seems more likely to have been a sloppy installation in the first place, but I am making an assumption as you say.

New kitchen gone in and kitchen company will often insist on the board being upgraded before the kitchen fitter will install new circuits to kit under a restricted license.

Britain's for sale, come and get it!

@PunjabrangDotCom yes the current needs a path to flow....the path if he disconnects or switches off the mains supply will be between the earth cable .....in his property and the actuall earth , the land the soil, itself and back to the supply transformer...the initial leakage current coming from either other properties devices that are still connected to the mains, eg fridges freezers..and if it was absolutely tiny...micro amps ...could be due to inductance caused somewhere by wires crossing over other wires and metals in the entire circuit..but i would expect that value to be micro amps...not high milli amps.

Houses built since the 1970's are PME, but older properties often still have rotting TNS services. When you turn up to an old stinker whose impedance is too high, you call out the network operator and they sometimes fix it just by connecting the earth terminal to the neutral at the head.

Reply to self! Having now looked at the innards of an RCD, it's clear that it cannot distinguish between excess/trip current on the L and N lines, so either will trip. Withe the L disconnected from the load circuits, the trip current is being supplied from the N line from the meter.

Seems very strange from my pov as an italian. All meters here have a built in isolator and they've always had it. In the smart meters it's the same isolator the power company uses to cut your power off if you go over your power quota - it's a standard isolator with an additional trip coil on the side. They even use this feature to reduce your quota to something ludicrous like 500W (just enough to run a fridge) as a last warning before cutting your power off completely if you don't pay.

This is an Amendment 3 board installed in December 2015. Personally, I doubt much changed in it between the original install and the July 2018 date of this video.

It seems to vary, I used to tell clients to call up the DNO to request installation themselves where an isolator was needed, but I knocked it on the head when one came back to me saying they'd been charged £150. Now I arrange installation myself through Haste of Leicestershire who I have an account with. They charge £60 plus VAT if I remember rightly.

They charge up in Yorkshire, £145.00

Oo-er, I hope you mean 'aspiring'??!

Ain't predictive text a pain......not dead (safely isolated?) yet.

Jolly relieved to hear it!

That's a pretty dreadful lack of due diligence by the installer.

@@dsesuk Needless to say he wasn't invited back...

Thanks Ross. There were a number of flaws in this video as I was new to the 'Tube at the time. It was off-the-cuff and not scripted, so I spoke without thinking, and what I said about NAPIT didn't come across properly. I do have a problem with NAPIT, and I did used to be a member of NAPIT, but I had to leave for reasons I've documented fully on my website blog I've linked to in the description. I'm certainly not saying all NAPIT installers are bad or that any other CPS isn't exactly the same. I also failed to film the temporary solution I found for that exposed tail (a fat cable tie), and to this day I don't know why I didn't capture that as it would have saved answering a lot of comments! This video was filmed under the naive assumption it would attract a relative handful of views in my locality and would be watched by prospective customers who wanted to put a face to the name when shopping around for sparkies. Speaking with other RU-vid types, what we've found is that creating videos initially draws a very small positive reaction, then as the popularity increases the comments become more hostile. Eventually, if you persevere, aim to improve content and try to show you're not a complete cowboy, then you achieve a level of acceptance and the shouting dies down. I always liken it to a stand-up comedian; encouraged at first by friends and family, roasted and heckled around the clubs, but with refinement to the act and a stubbornness not to be put off, they become better known and the audience greets them with expectant grins rather than being ready to throw insults or beer bottles! These days, I have a following of some great people, and any new vids tend to have positive responses and healthy discussion which is great as I'm as flawed as the next guy and I'm quite happy to be put in my place when I get things wrong! Thanks for watching!

Sadly, the only recourse is through Trading Standards which the homeowner would have to drive, or through the CPS (NAPIT, NICEIC, Elecsa etc.), but they would insist that the perpetrator has to make good, and the last thing most people want is the guy who didn't do a decent job in the first place to be back in their house with a chip on his shoulder.

I absolutely can blame NAPIT as this isn't an isolated example. This also isn't an example of work that is just lazy - untidy wiring within the CU could be blamed on it being a Friday afternoon rush job, but exposed copper on a tail, lack of a tail gland and bizarre mislabelling of the circuits are traits of a bad installer. Am I supposed to believe this is a one-off and his work is faultless on the jobs he does take his assessor to? The guy who put this CU in is a one-man-band operation, so the bloke doing the work is likely to be the one being assessed, and it wouldn't take too much questioning, even on a tidy job, to uncover the gaps in his knowledge which surely must be there. Also, if I shopped this installation to NAPIT, I guarantee they would do nothing about it. I've tried it before on another installation that was dangerous, where the installer had ripped off the client and where the installer was falsely claiming to also be TrustMark accredited. NAPIT's response was simply to force him to cough up £60 to become validated as a TrustMark member: no remedial action was taken and he remains on their books to this day (see link in description). From my experience with them both as a member and with what I see going on around my doorstep, NAPIT seem to allow just about anyone to join as, I assume, they know little will happen even if someone does complain. This may be a localised issue, and it may be the case that other CPS schemes have their own differing standards across geographical areas, but I can tell you from first and third hand experience of NICEIC and Stroma assessments that they are a lot more rigorous than NAPIT, at least around here. Some of the Part-P problems could be resolved if, when self-certifying the work, the installer was also required to upload a copy of their Electrical Installation Certificate which are then periodically reviewed by the CPS. Bad installers make bad paperwork, and that would raise red flags for an assessor to look more closely at the standards and understanding of any given member.

@@dsesuk If NAPIT had struck this guy off their books, I think he'd just continue to trade without any CPS membership. I do agree with you when it comes to a concern being raised, NAPIT should have investigated this.

So strike him off the books! The thing about CPS accreditation is that, as they would say themselves, it's supposed to show that someone has passed the required level of competency in terms of their electrical knowledge, toolwork and back-office procedures to be able to safely and professionally tout their services to the public. The perception in the industry however is that the CPS schemes are all in it for the money, will sign up just about anyone, and they do little to protect the public or even the sanctity of their own brand. Instead of lowering their standards to let pretty much anyone join, if they were truly in it for the public protection and not just the membership fees, then they would raise the bar for entry. Any given installer then has the choice to up their game to make the grade, or accept they don't cut the mustard and continue on as non-accredited. I always advise people to check the Registered Competent Persons database when hiring an electrician, but what's the use if someone who does work this badly can become accredited through NAPIT and show up on there? It gives the public false confidence that they're getting someone who isn't a dangerous idiot and who is backed by a NAPIT warranty, when in fact they're getting a cowboy and NAPIT won't want to know when you make a complaint, at least not unless you're prepared to have that same cowboy come back into your house to make good what he shouldn't have borked up in the first place! The CPS schemes are all a cartel, and there is a groundswell of people on the likes of Twitter who feel that being accredited with any of them is starting to become bad for business. Instead of forking out for their membership, it's coming to a point where selling yourself as someone independent of these overhead-inducing blind-eye-turning CPS schemes may become better for business.

I tried reporting a dodgy contractor to ghd NICEIC. They told me they wouldn't take a complaint from another contractor..... it was a death trap! Only from the customer! Shocking!

Funny you should mention that as it reminds me I bought a reel of such back around 2012/2013 and have never really used it. I think it's still buried on the van! I did use it for one application I recall, and I remember thinking it was okay, but I subsequently forgot it existed and have used heat shrink ever since. I must give it another look! Do you have any experience or opinions relating to it?

Yeah I use it fairly regularly but a lot of sparks I talk to seem to have never heard of it! My experience with it is generally positive, but much like anything quality varies brand to brand. I have had reels which were entirely un-useable & ended up straight in the bin. Was just thinking as I watched I don’t often use heat shrink other than for joining under floor heading cables (along with “I really should get a clamp meter”)

SamMegadeth Heat shrink it’s good stuff we use use quite a bit out here in Australia ,you could have used it there even as a temp solution While the customer waits for the meter to be replaced

Old pipework - wasn't going anywhere on the other side of the wall. I think there has been a boiler there, but that got relocated when it was replaced.

Tim Ballam b