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Anomaly in EICR

Situation; I have owned and let for about 17 years a small (1 bed) flat in large converted house. Conversion was done in 1987, six years or so before I bought. The property is in England.

A Managing Agent looks after tenant's requests and has a raft of contractors on their books for everything from plumbing and electrics to carpet-fitting, decoration and gardening. MA calls us for approval before engaging their contractor on any job. They arrange regular GasSafe inspections and certificates and at our request carried out an asbestos survey (none found!).

They have just written to advise that in line with new regulation they sent their electrician to carry out an EICR on the flat. Copies of the completed EICR and a quote for remedying defects arrived with their inspection advice.

I don't know why, but I'm always a little wary of such combined "we found a dangerous fault, but don't worry we can fix it for you" quotes.

I'm quite possibly wrong here, so I'd appreciate experienced opinion.

I really am not trying to avoid works that are necessary, even if they would require my tenant to move out (in the event of a full rewire for example).

Cut to the chase.

In the quote, one of the discovered faults to be repaired is described as, "No end to end reading on ring circuit, locate fault and re-terminate".

That same message is repeated in section 7 (Observations and recommendations) of the EICR, "No end to end reading on R2 - Locate and terminate" - with a C2 classification.

Ok. An open-circuit of the cpc loop needs finding and fixing, but..

In section 16 (Schedule of circuits and test results) the values for r1, rn and r2 are written in as 0.55, 0.54 and 0.84.

Can someone explain how the 0.84 Ohms measurement was made with an open cpc loop?

(I think 0.84 Ohms is quite good for 1.5mm vs 2.5mm. With r1 and rn around 0.55 I'd have expected at least 0.9.)

Moving on from that, and now feeling unsure of the veracity of the inspector's report:-

Next old chestnut; "Old consumer unit with no RCD protection - replace". To my certain knowledge there has been no modification or addition to the flat's electrics since I bought it. Has "retrospective normalisation" now caught up with us? I do realise that there are different regulations for let properties... Another C2.

Lastly; "Excessive exposed copper within sockets, need re-terminating. Another C2.

Again, to my certain knowledge there has been no modification or addition to the flat's electrics since I bought it.

To add to the pressure, EICR sect. 6 recommends next inspection in 2 weeks.

I doubt the electrician will want to engage with me if I question the report, far less re-quote with reduced scope.

Would it be best to ask the MA to arrange another, independent, EICR?

Please be assured, I do NOT suggest simply finding an electrician who will sign off an unsafe installation. If it is unsafe, or safe but doesn't meet regs, it must be rectified.

Sorry for the long post, but I've tried to include all relevant info.

0 David Stone over 4 years ago

It has been asked if a lack of surge protection should be coded. Surge protection is regulated in the 18th under various supply conditions, using information that will not be available in many cases. Coding something which is unknown in requirement without the whole risk assessment procedure (although it might be considered a good idea) is therefore NOT something that should be given even a C3. The coding system we use is based on safety, the reason for EICRs. Someone might like to make a reasonable safety case, it might take a long time with many examples of if, but, then kind of hand waving. Some of the examples in BS7671 are curious, to say the least: "result in serious injury to or loss of human life". The surge protection involved is extremely unlikely to save anyone because it implies direct contact with the surge, limited to 1.5 kV for a very short period (20 microseconds).

The risk assessment method in section 443 is a way to get an idea of the need for surge protection, but in domestic properties, the value of the "protected" (i.e 100% insurance) items is almost always too low to make it worthwhile. (443.4). Most of us have very few failures due to anything within this control measure, in fact, I consider it to be too arbitrary to be in any way useful. A lot of pressure must have been applied to get this in BS7671 at all. It may be useful in places with overhead lines in exposed sites, as I recently said in a meeting, "my only experience of failures on a very exposed site with completely overhead distribution and lots of lightning was a telephone line connected items like modems in a period of 15 years.". The telephone line had a gas-filled spark-gap and VDR surge suppression, which seemed very ineffective!
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0 wallywombat over 4 years ago

The "loss of life" etc provisions aren't due to direct contact with spikes in excess of 1.5kV - it's referring to equipment that might get damaged by said spike which would be dangerous - as an extreme example, hospital life support equipment.

As for domestic properties, the sheer amount of electronic equipment in houses these days easily ticks the costs box - TVs, PCs, games consoles, routers, LED lighting, boiler internal controller and thermostat etc.
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0 Former Community Member over 4 years ago

Hi and thanks for the replies on the provision of SPDs. The property has been in family ownership for 30 years. In fact I did the original wiring. The supply provision is underground and the Consumer unit split loaded with the incoming switch hosting the Oven, Immersion heater and 3 lighting circuits. The split side protected by 30 ma RCD protection servicing the ring main sockets and electric shower. All the wiring has cpc wired as twin and earths throughout. I am lothed to install a 100amp RCD on the input as up this point in time never had any unwanted tripping, but consider the oven may produce this on warm up.

I do understand the issues with SPD installations , as for many years ran multiple Data Centre operations and load switching in megawatts, so switching surges being the enemy of routine maintenance operations and unforeseen power outages.

The contractor is back today to test the supplementary bonding in the property which they failed to do on their initial EICR. They even had a copy of the previous certification with a Satisfactory result. New contractor new regs seem to be the problem. Nothing else has changed apart from some insurers beginning to specify that SPD’ be installed as you also point out..Many thanks to all the reply posts. Hope this ha gone away today and we get Satisfactory certification with a C 3 for the SPD provision. and the 3 lighting circuits. Regards. Robert.
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0 David Stone over 3 years ago

Wally, life support equipment will be internally protected against mains events of a greater magnitude than these devices do, and will have alarms and batteries to deal with potential failures. I'm not sure why that line is present, but almost certainly copied from an IEC or CENELEC document verbatim. The difficulty I see is that unless these devices are installed with very short cables, are looped through rather than spurred off etc. they will not perform anyway and are thus useless. In many cases, a protected extension cable is likely to work better than types 2 or 3 on a full installation, simply because the connections are very short and looped through. Fast signals are very difficult to decouple, and I would consider that some series inductance would help a great deal, to attenuate rather than absorb the pulse. Time will tell with real installations.
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Anomaly in EICR

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