Part P Domestic installer

[hpttranter]

I have worked with a fully qualified electrician for roughly 16 months. I no longer work with him but I would love to work for myself.
I have looked up a Part P domestic installer course provided by Delta Electrical Training. Is this to right course for me to get started.?????
Will it give me enough to get started??

Howard

 

[Dave 85]

You both make good points. There is no doubt that good experience is absolutely key to competence, but I have known 4 people, including myself, to start electrical firms in their early 20's after less than 5 years experience and only 1 of them I would consider incompetent in terms of understanding electrical safety and regulations, but he will almost certainly still be fairly incompetent in 20 years time.
The point I was making to the OP is that experience is what makes a competent domestic installer not the 2330. I felt for the entire duration of the course and have done ever since that it was entirely wasted on and unsuitable for a domestic electrician. I would not recommend spending months on end learning about power factor correction and three phase motors to someone who plans to spend the rest of his days attacking houses with a hammer drill.
The ONLY usefull thing it taught me was testing and fault finding and this can be learnt on other shorter courses.

After 3 years of night college some of the guys on my course, who wern't working as electricians, would not have had a clue how to do a junction box or wire a kitchen.

Of course this is my experience of one college and one set of not entirely competent lecturers, Im sure other people have had varied experiences of training.

 

[johnboy6083]

i completely disagree with your comment that your 2330 was wasted. It wasnt. If your firm hoes through hard times, then there is nothing staopping you working for another firm or through an agency, til things pick up, and beleive me, ive met lots of sparks who have had their own firms ect who have ended up on agency jobs/contracting sparks. You may not need the 3ph technical knowledge now, but it may come in useful later. Evem if you dont have the practical experience of doing it, you will atleast have the technical knowldege to be able to work it out, or know what your looking at.
Its a very diverse trade we're in, and its better tobe versatile than to restrict yourself to one area of it.

 

[JD6400]

Was that by any chance a college very , very close to where you live ?
Because if it is the one i think it is , you are lucky to be able write your name correctly after going to that one let alone learn a trade , so all the more credit to you for becoming a successful sparks now if that was the start you had !!!!!

To be honest , and i speak for our company now , we have yet to find a college worth a ---- and more importantly a tutor that could be trusted to even connect a 13a plug top up without the need to check it was correct !

This was not always the case ! I believe the change in policy from teaching , over to just getting in as many students and creaming what you can , came about 10 - 15 years ago .

I have had more than one experience with them to make me feel this way and i am surly not alone !?

 

[Guitarist]

I have to agree that College is only a small part of the equation. Of course, we learn about heavy current applications, electronics, how to work out rms currents using integration and differentiation, but that is just the "understanding" part. The application is what happens during the actual apprenticeship, the hours you spend doing something that you think is awesome, only to have the experienced guy clip you around the ear because you missed something obvious. You will always get people who can wire a lighting circuit simply because they've read about it or watched a video on youtube, but that doesn't make them good electricians.