[Lancaster] OT : electrical installation

[Ken Hough]

Andy,

AFAIK, you can do the installation yourself, but this must then be checked out 
by a qualified (certified?) electrician. Failure to have this check is likely to 
leave you open to insurance problems.

I've often wondered just how meaningful any check by an electrician can be 
unless he also pulls up floorboards, etc.

The electrics in my own house had been put in by supposedly qualified 
electricians, but when I did look under the floor boards, I found that two 
double sockets had been daisy chained off the ring main and the cable 
terminals were very slack! Also, some of the wires had been stripped back so 
far as to leave over 1" of exposed live wire outside the cable terminals.

So much for "qualified"!

Ken Hough
Kendal
Cumbria
UK

On Sunday 21 August 2011 09:37:22 andy baxter wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> This is way OT, but does anyone know about the regulations around
> electrical installations in the UK? A friend of mine has asked me to
> build them a brew temperature controller for their micro-brewery, and it
> would be good to know where I stand with regard to all this.
> 
> One specific question is are people allowed to install their own
> electrical sockets? I would like them to have an RCD socket in the the
> wall to protect the circuit. They only cost about 15 quid, and I could
> probably do it myself safely enough, but I'm not a qualified electrician
> and I would like to know if doing so is likely to cause trouble for me
> or them later on.
> 
> Also, are there any rules which would apply to the rest of the system?
> Roughly, I'm planning to use a microcontroller to operate an AC solid
> state switch module, which would control a convection heater in the
> insulated cabinet they are building. This is a prebuilt module with
> screw terminals, not separate parts, so I think it should be safe, but
> again I would like to know if there's any legal stuff I could fall foul of.
> 
> any help appreciated,
> 
> andy baxter
> 
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