tiburon
DIY
I'm having a bit of a disaster at the minute and would like an honest opinion. I am having a gas stove fitted in the corner of my room and switching the position of the current fire (which was a horrible flueless gas fire in the middle of the room) and the TV (in the corner where the new stove is to go). I had an electrician come out to chase the walls to get me a socket to where I would need it for the new TV. As it's a gas fire and the sockets are metal the stove people have confirmed there is no issue with heat behind the stove so to avoid removing the old socket and wrecking upstairs we've left it in place and the electrician has taken a spur off it (the only spur as it's a ring). No issue there as far as I can see and job carried out pretty swiftly.
The stove fitter then came last week and started to core the hole for the balanced flue in the corner of the room. I assumed he'd measured to avoid the socket on that wall but he hadn't and hadn't and cored straight through the cable for the socket (you'd almost think he'd aimed for it). Contrary to what he thinks (shrugged his shoulders and said he's fine because he had rubber boots on - I think it more likely that the MCB tripping, which tripped before the RCD, saved him). I spoke to the electrician who'd done the chasing for the spur for me and he said I 100% needed to dig up the floors upstairs to remove the cut cable and fit new cables and conduits, which didn't sound overly appetising. The other option was to chase a path round the flue pipe at right angles and connect the existing cables, which I understand is against the regulations in terms of safe zones with a view to drilling (although the argument that you'd never be drilling near the stove was raised as you can't hang things near it). The stove fitter had his electrician friend come out to look and sort it. I checked that he was a qualified electrician which thankfully he was but he has been to sort it now and I have serious doubts about the safety of the work.
He essentially chose option 2, chasing around the flue pipe outside the safe zones, which I can sort of forgive as the homeowner given the destruction that digging up the floors above would have entailed. I thought I'd be able to see what he'd done to verify that it was acceptable but when I went into the room, to my surprise, he'd already plastered over it. I asked him to explain and essentially what he did was chase the wall (with an SDS drill rather than a chaser), remove the two cables serving the socket below that had been severed and replace them with just a single cable into the socket, which he then connected to the two ring cables above the flue, effectively, as far as I can see as someone who is not an electrician, making the socket below a spur off the ring. The first issue that struck me is that, since the new socket for the TV is a spur fed from that, this surely makes the TV socket a spur off a spur, which I didn't think was allowed on the ring. His argument was that, since the socket behind the stove will never be used it isn't really a spur and more just a connection point and since the TV socket will only be used to power a TV, Sky box, etc. it will never exceed 13 amps. These are arguments I understand but of which I'm wary!
Second - and main - concern is that he connected his new cable to the two ring cables above the flue with Wago 221 lever connectors, taped the cable entry point 'to prevent moisture entering' and plastered over them without putting them in a box. I had always though Wagos needed to be in a Wago box to be maintenance free and plastering over the Wago connectors themselves really concerned me.
I suppose what I'd like to know is what electricians think of these two issues and whether there is any real safety concern now that it has been done or if it's now just a case of it shouldn't have been done but it has been so leave it now rather than dig it all out again. If there's a safety concern, I'm happy to pay for another electrician to come and do it right, even though it's clearly the stove fitter's fault that any electrical work had to be done in the first place.
The stove fitter then came last week and started to core the hole for the balanced flue in the corner of the room. I assumed he'd measured to avoid the socket on that wall but he hadn't and hadn't and cored straight through the cable for the socket (you'd almost think he'd aimed for it). Contrary to what he thinks (shrugged his shoulders and said he's fine because he had rubber boots on - I think it more likely that the MCB tripping, which tripped before the RCD, saved him). I spoke to the electrician who'd done the chasing for the spur for me and he said I 100% needed to dig up the floors upstairs to remove the cut cable and fit new cables and conduits, which didn't sound overly appetising. The other option was to chase a path round the flue pipe at right angles and connect the existing cables, which I understand is against the regulations in terms of safe zones with a view to drilling (although the argument that you'd never be drilling near the stove was raised as you can't hang things near it). The stove fitter had his electrician friend come out to look and sort it. I checked that he was a qualified electrician which thankfully he was but he has been to sort it now and I have serious doubts about the safety of the work.
He essentially chose option 2, chasing around the flue pipe outside the safe zones, which I can sort of forgive as the homeowner given the destruction that digging up the floors above would have entailed. I thought I'd be able to see what he'd done to verify that it was acceptable but when I went into the room, to my surprise, he'd already plastered over it. I asked him to explain and essentially what he did was chase the wall (with an SDS drill rather than a chaser), remove the two cables serving the socket below that had been severed and replace them with just a single cable into the socket, which he then connected to the two ring cables above the flue, effectively, as far as I can see as someone who is not an electrician, making the socket below a spur off the ring. The first issue that struck me is that, since the new socket for the TV is a spur fed from that, this surely makes the TV socket a spur off a spur, which I didn't think was allowed on the ring. His argument was that, since the socket behind the stove will never be used it isn't really a spur and more just a connection point and since the TV socket will only be used to power a TV, Sky box, etc. it will never exceed 13 amps. These are arguments I understand but of which I'm wary!
Second - and main - concern is that he connected his new cable to the two ring cables above the flue with Wago 221 lever connectors, taped the cable entry point 'to prevent moisture entering' and plastered over them without putting them in a box. I had always though Wagos needed to be in a Wago box to be maintenance free and plastering over the Wago connectors themselves really concerned me.
I suppose what I'd like to know is what electricians think of these two issues and whether there is any real safety concern now that it has been done or if it's now just a case of it shouldn't have been done but it has been so leave it now rather than dig it all out again. If there's a safety concern, I'm happy to pay for another electrician to come and do it right, even though it's clearly the stove fitter's fault that any electrical work had to be done in the first place.
