Career change to Electrician..

Originally Posted by nick_1871

Cheers rick0361, i've found this at my local college - http://www.bracknell.ac.uk/_colony/c...eDetailID=1503

Part time, 2 evenings a week for two years and it's recognised by the industry as a starting point. Not released dates/prices for this year yet.

That course is an absolute piece of p133. (I completed this in a year, as to the 2years that the course details says). Then after that you'd go on to the level 3 course, which would then get you your city and guilds 2330 certificate.

It then helps to have a think about whether you want to do housebashing, or commercial/industrial work. If you are thinking of the housebashing ,then you can then go on and pay to go on another course to get part P qualified. Coupled with the city and guilds, would give you a better chance in getting employed with an electrical contractor or company.

Also after the 2330 course, you can choose to move onto ONC level electrical courses, these involve a fair amount of maths though.

Also if you are thinking of working private, then expect to spend a large amount of time visiting customers to work up job estimates, quotes, etc. All your VAT and that sort of paperwork needs completing too. I know some electricians who did used to work for themselves, and said that all that work was too much effort, and took up large amounts of time. So therefore went back to working for a specific company.

HTH.

(I should be along at the next meet, so could tell you more/what I know then )

Cheers James..

A couple of friends of mine qualified on an intensive course - full time for c. 6 weeks, and it also involved study outside of the classes. Can't remember who it was with but it was somewhere up North (possibly Leeds?).

Slight derail, but what would I need if I wanted to do some work to my electrics in my house?

What kind of electric work are you thinking about?

Originally Posted by Caddy2000

Slight derail, but what would I need if I wanted to do some work to my electrics in my house?

Depends what you want to do.

Work in critical locations e.g. outside lights, external supplies to garages etc, work within kitchens and bathrooms and others, require Building Regulations Approval. This is covered by Part P of the regulations introduced 1st January 2005. You can do the work itself you will need to apply for building regulation approval from your local authority. They will need to inspect and where appropriate test and issue a completion certificate. If you don't do this you might have a nasty shock when you try to sell your home.

The alternative to this is to employ an elctrical contractor that is registered to a governement approved Competent Person Scheme such as NAPIT, NICEIC, ECA plus a few others. In this case the sparky can 'self-certify'. His registration body will give notice to the local authority accordingly.

Small jobs such as changing a light fitting, adding a spur socket to a living room or bedroom for example doesn't require you to notify the local authorty but you should still of course comply with the regulations, that is to say if you do the work in accordance with BS 7671 you'll be ok.

If you apply to the local authority for building reg approval you will have to pay a fee. this will vary from area to area but could be in the region a £100 - 200!

If you use a Part P sparky he will likely charge more than a non Part P but hopefully wolud be cheaper overall than the LA route.

If you need detail PM me.

Originally Posted by SDMF

What kind of electric work are you thinking about?

Just general stuff for the future - don't own a place just yet, but thinking of buying in about a year's time, and I'd like to be able to do most of the stuff myself. I'm technically minded and thinking about doing the Part P (might even see if work would pay for it seeing as I work for a very, very large FM company). Things like wiring up a garage, or putting a feed into the loft space would be a must for me, and if i can do it myself then all the better.

Originally Posted by skint

Depends what you want to do.

Work in critical locations e.g. outside lights, external supplies to garages etc, work within kitchens and bathrooms and others, require Building Regulations Approval. This is covered by Part P of the regulations introduced 1st January 2005. You can do the work itself you will need to apply for building regulation approval from your local authority. They will need to inspect and where appropriate test and issue a completion certificate. If you don't do this you might have a nasty shock when you try to sell your home.

The alternative to this is to employ an elctrical contractor that is registered to a governement approved Competent Person Scheme such as NAPIT, NICEIC, ECA plus a few others. In this case the sparky can 'self-certify'. His registration body will give notice to the local authority accordingly.

Small jobs such as changing a light fitting, adding a spur socket to a living room or bedroom for example doesn't require you to notify the local authorty but you should still of course comply with the regulations, that is to say if you do the work in accordance with BS 7671 you'll be ok.

If you apply to the local authority for building reg approval you will have to pay a fee. this will vary from area to area but could be in the region a £100 - 200!

If you use a Part P sparky he will likely charge more than a non Part P but hopefully wolud be cheaper overall than the LA route.

If you need detail PM me.

Cheers mate! I'll start looking at the training courses mentioned in this thread.

Part P is useful, although it's not necessarily needed. There are ways of doing work and not needing to be part P qualified. For example, you can replace a damaged circuit in a house/dwelling provided it's damaged or been chewed by rats. So you can in theory re-wire the whole house over a few weeks, by saying the existing wiring is damaged, or been attacked by rodents.

Unless the house has been inspected for the new homebuyers packs anyway, no-one is really going to know what sort of state/condition the wiring is in anyway. Some sparkies will re-wire, or alter existing circuits in there homes because no-one will be able to tell otherwise. If that makes sense?

This shouldn't suggest though that you go out and start re-wiring your own homes of course, unless your trained and know what your doing.

I'm going to replace the supply from our house to the garage, and fit a new consumer unit to the garage then re-wire it all sometime in the near future. But then I've been training to do this, I know what exactly I'm doing, and I'll be testing it all before any of it is made live/put into use.

For the most part my dad does his own wiring. Can i shop him in then?

Haha