Domestic, commercial or Industrial Electricians

[Pete999]

Right people, you have done all the courses, have all the cards required to get you onto sites, including the pseudo qualification "Part P". you're an Electrician.
You start out on your own, but the only work available to you at the moment is house bashing and the odd Domestic job, suddenly an opportunity of a years work refurbishing offices comes your way.
Do you think nah I'm a Domestic Electrician can't be doing that sort of work (forget the Domestic installer at the moment) you're an Electrician be proud of it. Because you are more skilled at Domestic stuff do you go for this or leave to others because you class yourself as a Domestic Electrician? even though your best mate who you trained with is now working on the office refurbishment and loving it, the same could be said about Industrial work.
I guess what I'm saying is what do you class yourself as Domestic, Commercial or Industrial, in fact should you be classifying yourself at all, you have all the relevant tickets,cards qualifications etc.
I was lucky I worked for a contractor that did all 3 of these installations so I had a well rounded Apprenticeship, so come on Guys and Gals you're Electricians don't think that just because you are more experience at 1 or the other that's all you should be doing, easier said than done you may say, but you're ELECTRICIANS be proud of that fact. Sorry for the rant. What do you think?

 

[freddo]

With clean earth use clean earth sockets, the cpc should be connected to all the back boxes to the dirty terminal, this is provided for safety of the installation/containment etc. The separate clean earth connects to the clean earth terminal on the socket which only goes to the sockets earth contacts. Without connecting to any parallel earth paths the clean earth won't have any circulating currents flowing which can cause interference to sensitive equipment. Well that's my understanding anyway.

 

[Pete999]

With clean earth use clean earth sockets, the cpc should be connected to all the back boxes to the dirty terminal, this is provided for safety of the installation/containment etc. The separate clean earth connects to the clean earth terminal on the socket which only goes to the sockets earth contacts. Without connecting to any parallel earth paths the clean earth won't have any circulating currents flowing which can cause interference to sensitive equipment. Well that's my understanding anyway.

Which are all connected together when the faceplate is screwed to the back box
How to Create a clean Earth connection for Power Conditioning - http://www.aelgroup.co.uk/faq/faq008.php

 

[telectrix]

Which are all connected together when the faceplate is screwed to the back box
How to Create a clean Earth connection for Power Conditioning - http://www.aelgroup.co.uk/faq/faq008.php

not sure here, pete, but would the "clean earth" faceplate be configured so that the socket earth terminal/s were not physically connected to the pins?

 

[Pete999]

not sure here, pete, but would the "clean earth" faceplate be configured so that the socket earth terminal/s were not physically connected to the pins?

Well, not sure either Tel, but when I was asked to provide a clean earth, it was usually a requirement to provide a a completely separate earth to the particular D/D or C/U that was supplying that circuit, in other words , say in an office, say on the 4th floor you would need to run your main earth right back to the intake position, where it would then be connected to a black box, never did find out what was inside of this box other than it was some sort of filter. What the OPs Boss is suggesting sounds to me like he is trying to provide a functional earth for some reason, which he hasn't said. That's my two Penny's worth. Edit Addition as an aside the sockets we used on "clean earth installs" were non standard 13 amp switch sockets (MK) witch to all intents and purposes were normal sockets with a non standard earth pin aperture, could be rotated through 90 deg or be an odd shape.

 

[freddo]

A clean earth socket has 2 separate earth terminals one for the earth pins one for the screw lugs. The circuit should have no continuity between the clean earth and safety earth (except when the circuit is connected to the supply. The sockets are available as both standard and non standard 13A configurations. I have a standard one here somewhere but can't find it right now. Cutting the CPCs out is wrong, you'd just as well use them and not bother with the separate earth wires...

The g/y link is removed for clean earth, the CPCs go in the terminal with the round earth symbol, the clean earth wires go in the terminal with the half round symbol.

I do most types of installations, domestic, commercial, industrial, installation, repairs and fault finding on installations and huge industrial machines. It's great fun most of the time, I wouldn't want to do domestic all the time, far too boring. You don't get to put in steel conduit, pyro and large armoured cables there. The main area I know nothing at all about and have no experience of is wiring in hazardous areas.

 

[The Ghost]

Well I never knew that, I think I have heard of them. Has that anything to do with high integrity earth sockets? Fascinating must find out more it might help with noise and various problems encountered in offices and the like. Thanks @freddo for the info. Oh and @Pete999 for the link to more fascinating info.

 

[freddo]

High integrity earthing is different and deals with circuits with likely high protective conductor currents and ensuring they end up to earth so you don't get a tingle when touching exposed conductive parts under a single fault condition.

This can be done is using dual earth terminal sockets, the idea being that if one of the earth terminals is loose there is still a good earth connection in the other terminal. For a radial circuit a separate earth wire has to be run from the last socket back to the distribution board (steel conduit connected to the last socket can be used instead of a separate wire), again both the separate wire and CPC (or both CPCs from a ring final) should be in separate terminals in the DBs earth bar. Any joint boxes used will also need separate terminals for each conductor for the same reason.

Where 2 radial final circuits which have identical circuit protection and live and earth conductor CSAs and fed from the same DB are installed, an earth link can be provided from the last socket on one circuit to the last socket on the other.

There are other methods that can be used but these often require a larger CPC or the use of expensive monitoring equipment.

 

[electric al]

Right people, you have done all the courses, have all the cards required to get you onto sites, including the pseudo qualification "Part P". you're an Electrician.
You start out on your own, but the only work available to you at the moment is house bashing and the odd Domestic job, suddenly an opportunity of a years work refurbishing offices comes your way.
Do you think nah I'm a Domestic Electrician can't be doing that sort of work (forget the Domestic installer at the moment) you're an Electrician be proud of it. Because you are more skilled at Domestic stuff do you go for this or leave to others because you class yourself as a Domestic Electrician? even though your best mate who you trained with is now working on the office refurbishment and loving it, the same could be said about Industrial work.
I guess what I'm saying is what do you class yourself as Domestic, Commercial or Industrial, in fact should you be classifying yourself at all, you have all the relevant tickets,cards qualifications etc.
I was lucky I worked for a contractor that did all 3 of these installations so I had a well rounded Apprenticeship, so come on Guys and Gals you're Electricians don't think that just because you are more experience at 1 or the other that's all you should be doing, easier said than done you may say, but you're ELECTRICIANS be proud of that fact. Sorry for the rant. What do you think?

 

[electric al]

Hey Pete , did you hear the one about the Hebrew the hittite and the byzantine that walked into a bar ?

 

[Rpa07]

Hey Pete , did you hear the one about the Hebrew the hittite and the byzantine that walked into a bar ?

Don't fall for it Pete, "they" wouldn't walk into a bar!

 

[Pete999]

Don't fall for it Pete, "they" wouldn't walk into a bar!

Exactly why I didn't answer

 

[electric al]

Truth is I can't tell you it anyway - turns out it's not kosher but they must have been very careless because the bar turned out to be an iron bar .

 

[Rpa07]

I can hear the lack of profanity now!

Truth is I can't tell you it anyway - turns out it's not kosher but they must have been very careless because the bar turned out to be an iron bar .

 

[Phil Thompson]

Thankfully I got a wide variety of experience in my apprenticeship. Mainly domestic and commercial. With a wee bit of industrial.

I try and stick with that now, very rare to do industrial, though there wouldn't be a lot of that type of work around here.

I know some guys and all they know is basic house bashing, and quite often they don't even attempt to gain any further knowledge & experience.

Many of the guys I went to college no longer do electrical. The majority having worked as intruder and fire alarm guys and the market isn't really there for the more specialised stuff.

I like the day to day and week to week variety, not just the same thing repeatedly.

 

[Pete999]

Thankfully I got a wide variety of experience in my apprenticeship. Mainly domestic and commercial. With a wee bit of industrial.

I try and stick with that now, very rare to do industrial, though there wouldn't be a lot of that type of work around here.

I know some guys and all they know is basic house bashing, and quite often they don't even attempt to gain any further knowledge & experience.

Many of the guys I went to college no longer do electrical. The majority having worked as intruder and fire alarm guys and the market isn't really there for the more specialised stuff.

I like the day to day and week to week variety, not just the same thing repeatedly.

I can see your point Phil, but my initial gripe was how can you be just one type of Electrician? if you're an Electrician that's what you are.