1970's Wiring Modification and My Liabilities?

[Octopus]

LOL, definitely feeling this Shanky. Never got the whole RFC thingy. Bulb Vs Lamp, I'm with the majority on but I'm afraid it was also a ring circuit and to a lesser degree a Megger during my college/apprenticeship.

The £350 is surprising for the LABC fee's but that's not part of my quote fortunately. Up to the customer if she wants to pay that when I've gone/during the works O

May not be part of your quote matey, but your responsibility to tell the customer they need to do it!

 

[Nomal1st]

May not be part of your quote matey, but your responsibility to tell the customer they need to do it!

I certainly will, all my communications have a footer that clearly states to all my customers that albeit I'm qualified and working to 17th edition any Part P/MW need certifying and the two options they have are to use a registered Spark or contact LABC and as the Homeowner the onus is upon them.

Cheers.

 

[davesparks]

Thanks for the thoughts.
With this and the other replies in my artillery I was able to get a significantly higher budget to work with and am happier about getting involved. I hate appearing to be "making more work" for myself but think the customer is happy all my recommendations are necessary.
I would appreciate more thoughts on where the law and the regulations cross over. Obviously BS7671 is a British Standard, not law. The 17th edition as I understand it states any new CU fitted should be a split load jobby. I definitely do not have room for even a small one inside the cupboard. Is there any problem with fitting a 16th edition C.U?
As for me suggesting she contract Build Control that was purely for the certification as I am not NICEIC registered so cannot issue a MWC myself.

Cheers.

BS7671 does not require split RCD boards, it requires that circuits and protective devices be arranged such that danger/disruption/inconvenience or whatever in the event of a device tripping is kept to a minimum.

You can interpret this however you wish. A lot of people read it as allowing half of the installation to go off if a fault occurs, so if an immersion heater was to go faulty it's perfectly acceptable for all of the downstairs lights to go off for example.
Personally I interpret it as requiring circuits to be protected individually and so use double pole RCBOs for domestic boards.

 

[Engineer54]

The way to go here is to install a 6 way CU with RCBO's protecting the existing 4 circuits and any circuit(s) that you install. The main bonding of the water/gas services will need to be addressed whatever you decide to do.... Personally i would not use a garage unit just to supply the kitchen sockets leaving the rest of the installation WITHOUT any form of RCD protection. If your going to do the job properly then, do it right and change out the existing course protection BS3036 Wylex CU for an RCD/RCBO protected CU!!

 

[davesparks]

And make sure they are double pole RCBOs,

 

[Engineer54]

And make sure they are double pole RCBOs,

Idealy maybe but certainly not esential, at least not on a TN installation!!

 

[davesparks]

Hmmmm, that is really just a matter of opinion.

I am of the belief that if a protective device is going to detect a fault it should disconnect that fault. It seems daft that SP RCBOs will detect a N-E fault and then disconnect the L.

I think we are moving closer to DP RCBOs becoming a regular item, they are available in single module form for domestic CUs for the same price as SP RCBOs.
It's just a matter of time before they become mor readily available for non-domestic installations.

 

[Engineer54]

I think you are referring to Single phase plus neutral (1ph+N) rather than DP RCBO's. Yep, all in favour of them, but how readily available they are right now is another matter. I had a look at the major UK players a while back, and at the time none were offering these RCBO's within their UK website catalogues...

 

[davesparks]

Yeah sorry single phase & switched neutral is what I meant.
They are not common yet, but there is a guy who sells to trade only doing them for the same price as other pekoe for SP RCBOs