Currys cooker installation....

[Octopus]

I didn't install the cooker as they had paid for removal, installation of new and disposal.....

I didn't charge for my 10 minutes either!

 

[Dave OCD]

I think Currys and other similar companies charge around £70-£80 for 'installing' an electric cooker. I'd happily do half a dozen every day for that, but as Dave said I doubt the poor blokes lumbered with the additional work get any extra pay - and with the size of cable involved I bet many aren't quite right !

 

[Octopus]

Another update:

Got another call yesterday... the Curry's chaps had been back out, had read my thoughts, continued to look for an earth rod.... then decided they weren't competent to make a decision........

 

[JK-Electrical]

I was called-out to a job today after Curry's installers had notified the customer that she needed an electrician to fit an RCD to the cooker circuit due to the "earth loop impedance reading being too high". When I arrived at the customer's house she showed me a green-coloured 'Electrical Appliance Installation Certificate' that the installers had given her after fitting - but not connecting - her new oven. The measured Zs value of the cooker circuit as recorded on the certificate was 73.2 ohms!!! I did my own Zs test and found the Zs value to be 62.38 ohms. My first conclusion was that one of us needs to get their multi-meter calibrated, and it sure ain't me as my Megger MFT 1730 was calibrated just three weeks ago!

I then did a Ze test which returned a reading of 62.5 ohms. I was unable to trace the final destination of the main earthing conductor as there was no main earthing terminal present! The main earth goes straight under under floorboards after it comes out the consumer unit. As the property is part of a row of terraced houses in a Glasgow suburb, the earthing system is highly unlikely to be TT. It is much more likely that the property is fed from a service head located in the property next door. I gave the customer the contact number for Scottish Power Networks and advised her to contact them post-haste as there wasn't anything else that I could do.

Curry's installers are refusing flat-out to connect the customer's new oven unless an RCD is fitted. Fortunately, since the consumer unit is a split-load type, it was simply just a case of transferring the cooker circuit over to the RCD-protected side so to comply.

I am greatly alarmed to have discovered that domestic installers are finding extremely high Zs values on final circuits they test, yet are advising customers that the fitting of an RCD solves the problem when such an instance of an extremely high Zs value clearly requires further investigation so to determine the cause. I despair.