Advice please about PAT testing

There is no legal requirement to go on a course, and if you are happy with L+N to E insulation resistance and the idea that the CPC should be intact on class 1 you have probably met the essential parts of the electrical knowledge part required. So unless your insurance demands otherwise, I'd not get too worried so long as you feel competent.

Based on our local Scout HQ, which is probably similar, PAT failures are mostly not subtle changes in an electrical parameters, but are more like issues where the mains lead has been slammed in the door, or the plug is cracked or covers/screws cord grip etc are missing, or in the case of toasters and microwave ovens, in need of a damn good clean of spilt something from around the internals. Kettles can pass tests with flying colours one week and trip off the RCD with a failed element the next.

In that sense, eyes, nose and some terrible sense of deja vue are your main weapons.

PAT machines vary from a box with a red and green light on up to the all singing all dancing that integrate with a label printer and keep records for any number of items up to many thousand, and programmable test settings for more types of device than you actually have. The spread of prices reflects this. Actually on the complex ones getting to the real readings is often not so easy, as the idea is that the machine is just pass/fail, and the limit is pre-set.

I am not convinced you really need a complex machine for what will settle down to a handful of  items a year, and suspect a meter and a notepad and some labels you write on by hand may be as good.

Someone will ask about calibrating the test set, and as an owner of some resistors and more than one meter I have tended to roll my own. Similarly paying out for a lead to connect a 13A plug to some non-standard appliance socket is somewhere else where, when I am  not at work so the time/money balance is different, I am happy to buy the connector and make the lead, rather than fork out over the odds.

What kit do you already posses ?

I would recommend that you go on a course, not so much in order to improve your knowledge which sounds sufficient already, but as a box ticking and *** covering exercise.


As has already been said, most failures are obvious without electrical test readings, though these are still important.

Agreed, Need to show some level cpd as evidence that you're still on the ball.

1. See my on-line notes

2. I have a Robin PAT 5000 available. If you're interested then pm me

3. Professional Indemnity insurance maybe of use as you are checking equipment used by non-competent persons


Legh

Many thanks for your valued advice Legh, broadgage and mapj1.  Having spent all my working life as an employee, I'm embarrassed to admit that I hadn't thought about insurance, I'll investigate this and a course.  I'll PM you Legh about the Robin.

did you mean to link to the 'on line notes' ?