In need of experience

[wilky423]

Hi all,
I have now reached the age of 41 & decided to embark on a change of career.
I am a qualified commercial energy assessor, but recently have done a 5 day introduction course at Tradeskills4u down in Crawley to test the water.

I enjoyed the course & it has now made me look further into this career.

I'm looking at the Part P & 2392 (inspection & testing) - Unsure if the 2392 is a definate requirement of the elecsa membership.

As money is not endless, & at £750 per course, do I need to do both in order to get my elecsa membership up & running ?

I intend on using my own house as a test bed for my elecsa membership as the house is:

Old wiring (black/red) throughout
Old type wire fuse board with 4 circuits, no RCDs

I would like to get a new board up on the wall & slowly add circuits one at a time whilst still running the old board at the same time as I can't do this rewire in a week. I'm also going to run new colour cabling around at the same time.

The other addition I'm going to be doing is adding a 240v socket to the front of the house for temp connecting the caravan & decoration lighting at the rear of the house. This I will prob do from a seperate small housing with RCD protection.

Would love to hear from all you time served guys out there with your comments good, bad or just advice.

Regards,
Stephen.

 

[Adam W]

I'd look at getting some experience before you think about going out on your own.
Most electricians spend around 4 years training for a reason - we didn't just take that long because we're a bit slow.
It may be worth doing that before you spend money on getting a van sign written and putting an advert in the yellow pages.

 

[wilky423]

Thanks for the reply, did'nt think any of the sparkys were a "bit slow" was just looking for advice on the house project side of things & also wanted to make sure about elecsa rules for using your own property for the assessment.

I've been working for myself for the past 6 years "on my own" so that side of things is covered.
Although I do think that 4 years training is excessive, I'm presuming you mean 4 years experience.

Stephen.

 

[Adam W]

Ordinarily you'd spend 3 years at college on day release working towards a technical certificate to demonstrate knowlege, and around a year doing an NVQ - a practical based work record, which could either be done at the same time as the technical certificate or after it.
Naturally you'd gain experience along the way.

A lot if not most people who start out on their own use their own properties for assessment pieces, but after going out into the real world many realise their 6 week course didn't really teach them anything and they're still at square one.
While you can take your time over doing work on your own property, paying customers will expect the work done quickly and for a good price.

 

[wilky423]

Cheers NovusSparkus

 

[Jabbajaws]

I totally agree there NovusSparkus. I qualified last year, right in the middle of the credit crunch, not realising how hard it would be to get into this trade, once l was done.

Plus loads of people, at present, can't afford work doing because of this time period, which means there are few jobs out there to gain any experience.

I have now realised what its going to take, and possibly how long that it will take to achieve, so l keep looking at my friends' electrical installations, trying to find things that dont look right, telling them what i've learned, giving them reasons why something (if anything at all) should be altered or changed.

Occasionally l come here and ask everyone about things that l don't understand and there's always good advice on here. Im glad l joined the forums. I reckon that it's gonna be another couple of years before l gain enough experience before l even look at setting up on my own.

It is indeed a lengthy process becoming an electrician.

Good Luck anyway mate...

 

[wilky423]

Cheers Jabbajaws, I agree with all, its about learning & hard work. Good luck too.

 

[SirKit Breaker]

Wilky,

The unfortunate thing about experience is that you can't learn it, you can only gain it. So to have 20 years experience you need to have been doing it for 20 years. However I don't want to dampen your spirit, do the training, and get the quals, and get stuck in, it will take you about 5 or 6 years to learn most of the basics for domestic and build up your speed to a decent standard with enough know how to get around the problems which you will encounter, and there are plenty!.

The minimum qualification to join Elecsa is C&G 2381 17th edition wiring regs, 2391 is a nice to have but if you haven't got it then you will have to prove that you are fully competent at testing, inspection and form filling, as the assessor will scrutinise your cert's. Don't even consider trying to register until you are 110% in the testing procedures etc, or you may as well flush your cash down the bog. To get onto Elecsa or any other scheme you are looking at parting with at least £1000 if you need all the books, test kit etc etc.

Cheers.........Howard

 

[m25maintenance]

1st i think u shud do the 2330 level 2 and 3 . experiance is only somthing u will get by doing it. this site is a really good tool. look at the tell us ur faults section and ull read the things that sparks find each day,things that will make u laf r cry. there was 1 a few days ago about the heavy girl who tripped the mcb every time she stood on a certain part of the floor. i get great laughs and info here. good luck mate,remember set urself a daily or hourly rate that ur happy to work for, the way i see it for the next so m,any years ur still at school and ull be getting paid too. iv often done jobs for free just to test my fault finding skills. so don;t worry be happy.lol