Welcome James. Have you been one of the silent watchers?


The difficulty with this kind of thing is that a lot of it comes down to local opinion, and of course, that varies widely. One of the few things which the 15th edition did was to try to define the bonding required, but then was hopeless because it became a case of "every bit of metal one can see" which was similarly wildly interpreted! I did have a particular dislike of commercial kitchens with all the supposedly moveable furniture (for cleaning) being firmly tied down by G and Y. The situation was in fact more dangerous because a kitchen became a virtual conductive location, and minor problems with portable appliances became major shock hazards, and extremely difficult to clean properly!


The inspection of such installations can be tricky, for all the reasons very reasonably listed above, but realistically few of them are significantly dangerous. Plastic boxes made of the proper material (glass-filled polymer often polypropylene) (Schnieder) are very rigid and do not suffer significant creep under load so banjos should be fine, but cheap ones without the rigid reinforcement are often unsatisfactory after a few years.

Local requirements added on top of BS7671, such as bonds to unconnected metalwork, are often unhelpful and put there to "make it safer" or some similar remark in a document produced by someone long gone, can become the bane of certain inspections. Inspectors need to remember that inspection is to BS7671 only, adding other bits should not be an EICR requirement (some have tried), as BS7671 is fairly reliable as far as safety goes. Is there a BS for Pirana nuts Mike, I suspect not, but they are quite useful? 

Welcome James. Have you been one of the silent watchers?


The difficulty with this kind of thing is that a lot of it comes down to local opinion, and of course, that varies widely. One of the few things which the 15th edition did was to try to define the bonding required, but then was hopeless because it became a case of "every bit of metal one can see" which was similarly wildly interpreted! I did have a particular dislike of commercial kitchens with all the supposedly moveable furniture (for cleaning) being firmly tied down by G and Y. The situation was in fact more dangerous because a kitchen became a virtual conductive location, and minor problems with portable appliances became major shock hazards, and extremely difficult to clean properly!


The inspection of such installations can be tricky, for all the reasons very reasonably listed above, but realistically few of them are significantly dangerous. Plastic boxes made of the proper material (glass-filled polymer often polypropylene) (Schnieder) are very rigid and do not suffer significant creep under load so banjos should be fine, but cheap ones without the rigid reinforcement are often unsatisfactory after a few years.

Local requirements added on top of BS7671, such as bonds to unconnected metalwork, are often unhelpful and put there to "make it safer" or some similar remark in a document produced by someone long gone, can become the bane of certain inspections. Inspectors need to remember that inspection is to BS7671 only, adding other bits should not be an EICR requirement (some have tried), as BS7671 is fairly reliable as far as safety goes. Is there a BS for Pirana nuts Mike, I suspect not, but they are quite useful?