Career change to Electrician..

[tigersaw]

Just use old red/black twin and earth, then you can claim it was there before part P.

Originally Posted by SDMF

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? I'm sorry but this simply doesn't make sense, its short sighted and selfish as usually these so called competent bods are the ones that create the risk to others.
Electrical work is quite complex. I have a case at the moment of a new house being self certified for Part P compliance which is riddled with faults. The lack of third party check is one of the biggest issues that bought these requirements into the regulations. Because this went through the correct process it is being picked up and corrected. What about the poor sod who buys the house next time? There are many cases of subsequent home owners being unable to complete house sales because of illegal work carried out by previous owners as the work is now being identified by a wiser buying and money lending market. New wiring can be identified

Part P is a legal requirement - it's a specific part of the building regulations as noted above. Being a Part P electrical contractor has simply developed as slang for someone who can self certify their own installation without the need for notification to Building Control - but they still have to notify their certifying body.

As noted above you don't have to be a self certifying contractor to do the work, you can DIY but not to obtain the appropriate approvals i.e. building regulation approval for DIY work whether or not you think you are competent to do so usually ends in tears. Despite what you might think authorities aren't as daft as you would like them to be.

You can argue a rewire through bit by bit repair but in reality it simply won't hold up in court unless of course you're going take many years to go through this process. There are court cases where people have tried the same principle 'repairing' drains and roofs and so on.

To me the practice of undertaking work without going through the due process just because you think you can get away with it is no ifferent to selling a bike saying it has a recent MOT when it doesn't.

Sorry this may be dramatic, but I've had to deal with the problems of people in tears because the house sale falls through, attend court because the old lady died of carbon monoxide poisoning whilst in her own bath, people killed under collapsed walls, trapped in badly designed loft conversions because the fire escape route wasn't up to scratch. Gets my goat I'm afraid and electrical safety is no different since they are reported as one of the main causes of house fires.

RANT OVER sorry for derail - Caddy's fault!!

[Ruffy]

Originally Posted by skint

Part P is a legal requirement - it's a specific part of the building regulations as noted above.
...

Yep, it's now a criminal offence not to comply, something most people are still not aware of

Originally Posted by skint

...
As noted above you don't have to be a self certifying contractor to do the work, you can DIY but not to obtain the appropriate approvals i.e. building regulation approval for DIY work whether or not you think you are competent to do so usually ends in tears. Despite what you might think authorities aren't as daft as you would like them to be.
...

I hope it's not that bad, as I'm about to embark on this route. There shouldn't be a problem if you are competent, but there's no clear guidance on how to demonstrate it. The authorities seem to be good at making money out of it though, especially wrt. testing.

Originally Posted by skint

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Gets my goat I'm afraid and electrical safety is no different since they are reported as one of the main causes of house fires.
...

Whilst I agree in general about electrical safety, to my knowledge one of the main causes of fires resulting from poor electrical installation is poor/loose wire termination and yet changing socket tops & light switches etc. is exempt from Part P. Big Anomaly IMHO!

Unfortunately, Part P is a big divider of opinion in the electrical community and there is many a rant/debate on the IET Wiring Regs forum (see www.theiet.org/forums ). I am in the camp that believes that Part P has just added cost for the majority of competent, small-scale installers and created "jobs for the boys". I happen to be a professional Electrical Engineer in the power field and have some installation competency from earlier jobs but, now that my career has moved on, my authorisations and certified qualifications do not cover Part P so I effectively can't work in my own home or help out my relatives: We either have to employ someone else who can self certify to do the job, pay the local authority or work illegally. I'm actually looking at C&G courses off my own back just so that I can get the right certification to back it all up in the eyes of the Local Authority. On top of that I'll now have to pay for regular third party certification of the calibration of my test instruments. It isn't a cheap process! End of my rant.

Also, OP, be aware that the IET Wiring Regs (BS EN 7671) have just been re-issued as 17th Edition, so courses and qualifications are being modified. Make sure you get the latest course content.
The bare minimum qualifications are probably C&G 2382 for design & installation, C&G 2392 for inspection & testing (previously 2381 & 2391 for 16th Edition), but you will need to supplement these with much practical experience before you can consider yourself competent. Do a search on the IET Wiring Regs forum, via link above, for further info as there's plenty of stuff there.

[tigersaw]

I'm not sure how all of this affects or should worry the average joe though. I bought this house a year ago, and got a sparky in because the leccy kept tripping. Oddly the fridge stayed on. The fridge turned out to have its own supply bypassing the fuses, so this was not a new problem. The cause of the tripping was the garden wiring - normal twin/earth into choc blocks taped and buried. All was ripped out, fixed and certified. It still trips sometimes. Previously I had a full building survey, but no electrical testing was included. The sparky took pictures of some of his finds, for his black museum. However, prev owner says nothing to do with him, so thats the end of it really. I can't see how rules and regs are going to make any difference to things like this, nor make people liable, bodgy plumbing and wiring are all too common. Sorry for derail.

Originally Posted by Ruffy

The authorities seem to be good at making money out of it though, especially wrt. testing. No money made - this is a self financing part of a council required by law to cover its costs through charges (individually there will be swings and roundabouts), it does NOT receive any external funding from Council tax or any other source, and because for many councils the number of applications submitted for this type of work is few it isn't cost effective to have electrical specialists in house as such. It can easily cost £350 for tests to be undertaken by a contractor hence the fees have to cover this. It isn't the council's choice, that's the way the legislation was set up - Sadly in some cases the cost of control is more than the actual value of installation work! I hasten to add very much against what Councils wanted and argues strongly against.

Whilst I agree in general about electrical safety, to my knowledge one of the main causes of fires resulting from poor electrical installation is poor/loose wire termination and yet changing socket tops & light switches etc. is exempt from Part P. Big Anomaly IMHO! I'm sure Councils very much agree with this, but again they didn't set the rules. Part P was introduced very messily, it was revised within just a year of its introduction.

Unfortunately, Part P is a big divider of opinion in the electrical community and there is many a rant/debate on the IET Wiring Regs forum (see www.theiet.org/forums ). I am in the camp that believes that Part P has just added cost for the majority of competent, small-scale installers and created "jobs for the boys". I happen to be a professional Electrical Engineer in the power field and have some installation competency from earlier jobs but, now that my career has moved on, my authorisations and certified qualifications do not cover Part P so I effectively can't work in my own home or help out my relatives: We either have to employ someone else who can self certify to do the job, pay the local authority or work illegally. I'm actually looking at C&G courses off my own back just so that I can get the right certification to back it all up in the eyes of the Local Authority. On top of that I'll now have to pay for regular third party certification of the calibration of my test instruments. It isn't a cheap process! End of my rant. There is a huge amount of empathy from Council's on this. I know of chap near me in his 60's carrying out safe (as far as I know) installations all his working career but no formal qualifications to find all of sudden he can't get work. Unfortunately it happens in lots of skilled jobs these days. I can remeber when the simple O Level counted for something.

Originally Posted by tigersaw

I'm not sure how all of this affects or should worry the average joe though. I bought this house a year ago, and got a sparky in because the leccy kept tripping. Oddly the fridge stayed on. The fridge turned out to have its own supply bypassing the fuses, so this was not a new problem. The cause of the tripping was the garden wiring - normal twin/earth into choc blocks taped and buried. All was ripped out, fixed and certified. It still trips sometimes. Previously I had a full building survey, but no electrical testing was included. The sparky took pictures of some of his finds, for his black museum. However, prev owner says nothing to do with him, so thats the end of it really. I can't see how rules and regs are going to make any difference to things like this, nor make people liable, bodgy plumbing and wiring are all too common. Sorry for derail.

There will always be problems but I think the intention is to reduce them as far as possible. Unfortunately as noted above Part P was introduced badly and is an ill thought through requirement, (as most seem to be over last few years) and was actually dumped on Council's to make happen. There is nothing wrong in the principle of such trades being licensed, to some extent it makes sense but to give an option that potentially undermines this is stupid - that has been argued with Gov't of course!
Average Joe should worry if only that 'unauthorised work' could affect their house sale later. At the present time the conveyancing process isn't too hot on picking up this particular requirement, but it is only a matter of time - it took best part of 15 years for them to tune into the need to obtain copies of building regulation completion certificates for building work, then much less time to tune into checking for various types of building work and idnetifying them on site e.g. internal alterations loft conversions etc, and only a few months to tune into quizing about replacement windows (did you know this was in the building regulations?)- so identifying electrical work will happen.

...before anyone rants about this current Govt on this issue (bad as it is) it was the Tories during eighties that started all this...

Originally Posted by skint

Part P is a legal requirement - it's a specific part of the building regulations as noted above. Being a Part P electrical contractor has simply developed as slang for someone who can self certify their own installation without the need for notification to Building Control - but they still have to notify their certifying body.

As noted above you don't have to be a self certifying contractor to do the work, you can DIY but not to obtain the appropriate approvals i.e. building regulation approval for DIY work whether or not you think you are competent to do so usually ends in tears. Despite what you might think authorities aren't as daft as you would like them to be.

You can argue a rewire through bit by bit repair but in reality it simply won't hold up in court unless of course you're going take many years to go through this process. There are court cases where people have tried the same principle 'repairing' drains and roofs and so on.

To me the practice of undertaking work without going through the due process just because you think you can get away with it is no ifferent to selling a bike saying it has a recent MOT when it doesn't.

Sorry this may be dramatic, but I've had to deal with the problems of people in tears because the house sale falls through, attend court because the old lady died of carbon monoxide poisoning whilst in her own bath, people killed under collapsed walls, trapped in badly designed loft conversions because the fire escape route wasn't up to scratch. Gets my goat I'm afraid and electrical safety is no different since they are reported as one of the main causes of house fires.

RANT OVER sorry for derail - Caddy's fault!!

Usually is.......

[timwilky]

Prior to part P, I would do the occasional rewire for friends/family. Whilst not qualified, I worked to the 16th Edition rules. It wasn't rocket science.

Part P does not stop the bodger. However it does stop the knowledgeable/competent etc. As they are the ones that play by the rules.

One thing I did, prior to part P was to stock in a few rolls of red/black T&E. That way all in my house was prior to part P

Originally Posted by Caddy2000

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

In my third year of evening classes doing Electrotechnical blah blah and it's starting to get to be a real drag. I've heard they've joined years one and two now which of courde I was very pleased about . All multiple choice exams up until the third year-another great idea . Nearly done now!

First thing you want is the 17th edition I'd say. Prices vary quite a lot but if you're a total newbie I'd do the 1 evening a week route for about 10 weeks. Inspection and testing is a short course too but my old work mate is just starting the Sparks route and apparently you need to be in the business to do it. Probably varies college to college.

Good luck and be wary of the cowboys and morons out there. I got a good shock off a plug which had been wired in parallel to ANOTHER plug! Couldn't believe it. Basically one fridge had two plugs so when one was plugged in the other was live. Couldn't find out who was responsible.


P.S. If you're young enough a big firm might be the way to go. JIB registered firms are pretty good cos your wages are (pretty sure about this) regulated and guaranteed to go up in line with their published wages.

[Ruffy]

For the sake of completeness, I should point out that Part P is a section of the Building Regulations that cover England & Wales only. The regs in Scotland are different and what electrical work can be done there without a building warrant isn't the same as what is Part P exempt.

However, to go back to OP, the overriding standard throughout the UK is BS EN 7671:2008, Requirements for Electrical Installations (aka the IET 17th Edition Wiring Regs). The 17th Edition has just been published and comes into force in the middle of the year.

(From a strictly legal perspective, of course, you don't have to work to the Wiring Regs, as they are only a standard, not actual legislation. However, in the event of a court hearing, the defence of "working to accepted standards" is the easiest to pursue and probably the only one that will give you a reasonable chance of success as there is a myriad of law relating to electrical work. Legal eagles feel free to comment!)

So, to be a competent electrician you really need to be able to install to this standard. Courses and qualifications will help you gain the basic knowledge but I suggest you try to find a way of gaining as much experience of installing to this standard as possible (the old apprenticeship approach). It's the practical knowledge that's hardest to come by as a career changer. I don't know how easy it will be to persuade a firm to take you on. Sell your self as a responsible, mature, motivated person - you may even have some non-electrical skills that the business can make use of in the short term. However, it might mean a period on low income as you get yourself trained up.

Hope this helps.

Cheers for that. Not decided yet what i'll do but the course I have in mind (C&G 2330) doesn't start until Sept. There are companies who offer this course as a distance learning with practical sessions package for a lot more money but i'd rather do it at the local college for a whole lot less money. There must be companies willing to take on a part qualified career changer but as you say the money is a concern. I may have to take a significant drop in salary for a while, I guess it depends on my situation at the time as to whether that is a possiblilty.

Cheers for all the info..