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17th edition design given 18th edition certifcate

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
Hello, I recently purchased a new build home on a small development; a rather unique situation has occurred that I thought was interesting and might interest some people here to discuss. It's still currently unresolved but progress is being made.


The house has a NICEIC BS 7671: 2018 domestic electrical installation certificate dated 5/2/20 with no departures identified; with the only comment being no water bond due to plastic pipework. I noticed that no SPD had been fitted so asked the contractor for the completed risk assessment to determine that it was not needed. Initially they did not know what I was on about and then said that no SPD was fitted due to the initial design being done in December 2018 to the 17th edition. So far so good!


However on the electrical designs I have there was a revision on 27/5/2019 and at my request I later paid for an additional £1700 of fixed LED lighting to be installed throughout on 20/11/2019. After bringing this up I was told it was still to the 17th and that "any subsequent revisions are based on the regulations in force at the time of the original design". The installation certificate includes these lighting changes as many more (20+) positions are served on the circuits, everything else seems to be as the 27/5/2019 revision design.


I then asked why a 18th edition certificate had been issued with no note of that the installation is actually to 17th design and standard and was told that they had used up all their 17th edition certificates during the grace period, that the NICEIC had advised them to use 18th edition certificates but place "n/a" on items pertaining to SPDs and that their response is to amend the existing certificate to note that the installation was carried out to the 17th edition regulations.


I can forgive that yes, even a brand new home can be delivered not to the latest regulation due to a design from a grace period (as always regulations can be updated quicker than projects) but I do not get a good feeling from the 18th edition certificate being issued on a 17th edition design and installation without any indication - certainly the other homeowners on the development may not be as keen on protecting their extra gizmos as I am!



 


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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member

    As a belated update to this the NICIEC eventually attended twice after some sockets were shown to have been terminated through the sleeve of CPC and that a switch fuse  to protect tails was added without any testing.

    The design was a copy from another development, 24 way dual RCD board using type AC rcds, 1 spare way. These rcd groups included an ev charger and no effort to split the lighting resulting in the whole house in darkness during a fault. Earth leakage was measured presumably from included modern devices and the led lighting.

    The certificate has been reissued after circuit rearrangement as best as possible and ev charger made good. 

    An outstanding issue is that the real maximum demand could very easily hammer the switch fuse rating if the ev charger is used for a few hours. Now that the circuits have been rearranged the max load on one rcd group is quite high, above the rating of the rcd without diversity, and the switch fuse is down rated compared service head fuse by a lot, so stuck as upgrading it would bring it past the rating of the rcd. (Niceic no longer interested).

    All in all messy and a disappointing affair and has left me shocked at the state of the industry in certain areas.

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  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member

    As a belated update to this the NICIEC eventually attended twice after some sockets were shown to have been terminated through the sleeve of CPC and that a switch fuse  to protect tails was added without any testing.

    The design was a copy from another development, 24 way dual RCD board using type AC rcds, 1 spare way. These rcd groups included an ev charger and no effort to split the lighting resulting in the whole house in darkness during a fault. Earth leakage was measured presumably from included modern devices and the led lighting.

    The certificate has been reissued after circuit rearrangement as best as possible and ev charger made good. 

    An outstanding issue is that the real maximum demand could very easily hammer the switch fuse rating if the ev charger is used for a few hours. Now that the circuits have been rearranged the max load on one rcd group is quite high, above the rating of the rcd without diversity, and the switch fuse is down rated compared service head fuse by a lot, so stuck as upgrading it would bring it past the rating of the rcd. (Niceic no longer interested).

    All in all messy and a disappointing affair and has left me shocked at the state of the industry in certain areas.

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