insurance compay help cu changes/ general installation

bobby101 · Oct 5, 2011

hi all please help i find myself in a bit of a situation i work with a company who primarily do insurance work ie when a property is damaged through fire, water and the like. anyways as you can imagine it provides some eyeopeners of propertys my questions are these

1. when doing a pir on these propertys they generally fail, but does this mean that our company is then responsible for upgrading so as to pass the installation or jus make the installation safe, then issue the failed pir report and minors/ elec install certs to the home owner and leave the property as safe as poss.

3. had todo a cu change to a property that was fire damaged primarily smoke damge but the cu had slight heat damage so i decided to replace it but before i could i had to go on sick leave ... anyways my company decided to involve another company to do the change over.
the original board was a standard 6 way and main sw .. i have always been in the knowledge that when doing these changeovers th cu should be upgraded to current iee regs ie provide rcd protection but the company that did the changerover replaced the cu with a unit that was the same type no rcd protection it has caused a massive argument in my workplace plz tell me im right ...

Richard Burns · Oct 5, 2011

A PIR is an inspection of an electrical installation to detail areas where an installation may not be safe for continued use. There is nothing further required from a PIR. Obviously any immediate dangers should be advised to the client immediately in writing (and I would say made safe) but there is no requirement to do remedial work.

All new electrical work must comply with the current version of BS7671, unless an electrical designer has detailed reasons why a departure is as safe or safer than BS7671. Certainly a consumer unit change should be up to BS7671, otherwise you would not be able to complete the EIC.

Rockingit · Oct 5, 2011

I actually have first hand experience of just this problem, having had a massive flood last year. To cut a story short, we had a total 100% devastation flood and spent 11 months living in a holiday cottage whilst the insurers contractors pee'd about and wasted time.

They sent their own electrical company in to do a PIR, I had already done my own. I disagreed with theirs (and with good reason) and a scrap ensued. They were quite content just to make good the areas damaged by water, but not actually comply with the bigger picture of the regs whilst they did it. I had also disconnected certain circuits for reasons of safety and they didn't even bother to test them, claiming that they weren't in service at the time of the PIR and therefore not part of the remit.

The insurer was of the opinion that they only had a responsibility to replace 'like for like' and that therefore excluded upgrading 14th/15th edition regs to current day.

I happened to be on site (by chance) on a day when one of the builders managed to cut through the water bonding cable and the cooker 6mm. Their contractors came out to site to make good and promptly started to JOIN the bonding cable back together. I threw them off site.

It ended up that I did all the work myself but the insurers paid for materials as a compromise. So the house got a complete rewire top to bottom, new fixtures and upgrades, shiny shiny - cost me about a week of sweat over the Crimbo holidays and the insurers about £1k of bits, which was way cheaper to them than the original suggested bodge anyway.

I think the only way this will ever get resolved is by somebody taking this issue into a court room and having a judge decide on the exact terms of 'like for like' when BS7671 is involved. And when most people just want to get back in their house, that's unlikely to happen.