Certification of electrical appliance

This seems most odd.

UKAS are the over arching body,  appointed by government,  their role is to assess and accredit all the other organisations that provide services including certification, testing, inspection and calibration.

They do not themselves test stuff as a service,

Now, for CE marking or UKCA, which are the product standards against which you should be declaring.

In terms of UKCA/CE marking, a heater needs to meet, probably among others the low voltage directive, the EMC directives and

EN 60519-1  Safety in Electric Heater Installations Part I: General Requirements IEC 60519-1:2006)

EN 60519-2  Particular Requirements for Resistance Heaters Part II: (IEC 60519- 2:3006)

Mike.

Thanks a lot Mike. So how or where do we get the whole unit assessed and accredited? They are electrically (PAT) tested. The main concern is from insurance about fire risk. We bought electrical component parts from a reputable supplier with, we hope, the relevant standards met according to their data sheets (am I allowed to mention company names?) - the rest is a simple mechanical housing.  

If you are the manufacturer, and it sounds like you may be, you just declare that it meets the standards, using your in house testing keeping a tech file of all the evidence, calculations test results etc  that supports your declaration, or you prove it by contracting out  some testing to a third party test house such as

Tuv, IES or many others,

In general this third party testing is prohibitively expensive for small nos of something simple, so the requirement to test is frequently reduced to the minimum or totally ignored.

The cynical may wonder if the regulations and the price at which standards are sold,  are designed to stamp out small competitors, favouring the market to those mass manufacturers with deep pockets and long production runs.  I could not possibly comment.

However, there are folk who make a 24/7 living out of advising folk what should be tested and how,  which bits of what standard applies to specific cases etc. It rapidly becomes  very complex.

You may be able to argue in your file that you are using bits that cannot credibly fail to meet the requirements, because the individual components do and the way they are put together means no new risks are being introduced by careless use of inappropriate wire inside the box or something. In which case someone happy in principle to defend their decision in court, signs a formal declaration that the kit complies, and stickers are affixed. In many ways, like a sort of modern day sin-eater,  transfer of this risk  is what the test houses get paid for.

They then issue a report a bit like this one for a fan heater

That is it... well in  outline.

PATing, while quite important is much simpler and only verifies earthing and insulation, but nothing about EMC, testing for dangerous surface temperatures, fire risk mitigation such as for example the presence of appropriate thermal fuses, or maybe tilt switches if it is required to turn off if covered or if it is knocked over on a carpet, statutory labels etc.

Mike

Hi Alison, Just to build on the previous replies, you have to split out legal requirements from internal procedures (such as CoE Facility Rules). Irrespective of the local procedures, you have a legal requirement to make sure that things that are safe (otherwise things like insurance policies etc become invalid). This is CE/UKCA Marking. In the case of a one-off product, getting it formally tested to a harmonised standard (the process of CE marking for safety), would become quite expensive. At Element (and many of the other UKAS accredited test labs), we would perform a 'basic safety assessment' to make sure that the inherent design is OK. You need to make sure you have built your product from reputable components (RS Components, Farnell etc). Following this process you will be in a position to UKCA mark the product and comply with the CofE requirements in one go.

Hi Alison,

As an ex-Churchwarden at our local CofE church, I feel your pain with the Faculty requirements.

I am assuming that you didn't manufacture the heater from scratch but rather assembled manufactured components to make the heater. As long as the component parts are all either CE (or UKCA) marked or specified to meet a relevant standard then as Stephen says you can self-certify the product as compliant and CE/UKCA mark your heater. However you need to be aware of what directive(s) you are required to comply with (I presume the low voltage directive might be the only relevant one here, but there could be others).

I don't know which Diocese you come under but where we are getting a Faculty approved is a nightmare and if you have similar problems I would suggest that if part of your application is that you will have the heater installation certified by a registered electrician it might help the Faculty process.

Thanks Alasdair

Thanks Stephen - as an aside, are you based with "Element" in Malvern?