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Question about Who can do what and minor works certs

Former Community Member
Former Community Member
I have a couple of questions regarding small electrical works in a house, who can do them and whether a minor works cert is needed.

 

im trying to nail down an answer to the following. 


i) Can a plumber / non-electrician  replace a broken immersion heater in a water cylinder. i.e. unwire old one from the fused spur and wire in new one to fused spur? Is an qualified electrician needed? Is a minor works cert needed?


ii) With regard to replacing a like for like electric shower in a bathroom that has broken….can a plumber / non-electrician do this? Or is a plumber needed for wet part and electrician for electric side. Again, is a minor works certificate needed.


iii) With regard to replacement of a central heating component such as a zone valve or cylinder stat….is a minor works cert needed ? Can this work be undertaken by a plumber / non-electrician?


I’m trying to work out what plumbing works can be undertaken by anyone / a non-electrician and what works require both trades.


in the plumbing / heating trade there is cross over. 


Many thanks for your time
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    they are actually very safe...if installed correctly they have a few levels of safety devices. For one to blow up you would really have to either be completely incompetant or try to do it.  There is an interesting cross over...changing an immersion  on a direct unvented cylinder would possibly need a g3 plumber and electrician (assuming from the discussion that a plumber can't change an immersion)
  • 0
    Covguy:

    they are actually very safe...if installed correctly they have a few levels of safety devices. For one to blow up you would really have to either be completely incompetant or try to do it.  There is an interesting cross over...changing an immersion  on a direct unvented cylinder would possibly need a g3 plumber and electrician (assuming from the discussion that a plumber can't change an immersion)


    I was thinking of serious leakage due to the expansion vessel failing. Please see the Daley videos referenced above.


    Z.


  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    mapj1:

    Well you can print out a minor works certificate from here  and have a look.

    There is no formal qualification needed to fill one out, but do you know what all the words are and what to do to fill it out ?

    If yes you are competent to issue it, equally you may have certificates galore but if you do not know how to check the earthing or what cable sizes should be, you should not be doing so

    (and there do seem to be some out there with 'Electrician' on the van whose certificates are more than a bit doubtful).


    As Harry Enfield nearly said, 'plumbers, know your limits' ..


    Mike



    (another sketch about folk trying things they maybe need more training for..)

     


    Fully agree. The thing that I am conscious with this whole scenario is this....


    If something goes wrong and you have a bit of paper that the courts / authorities / insurance companies like then there is a greater chance of you not being in the doo doo than if you have nothing. I'm not saying having a certificate will absolve you of being negligent or generally bad but   Being able to prove competence is going to be super important if something goes wrong. If, as they do sometimes, an accident happens that could have happened to anyone  and you don't have a proof of competence that the authorities like then you are in trouble. You are on the back foot from the start without some evidence of compentence and I guess the only way to prove a min level of competence is a cert of some kind.


  • 0
    "The LA will want the work done to BS 7671 and will want a copy of the cert."

    What the LA want and what the law (Part P) says are two very different things.


    But none of the examples in this post require notification under part P - new circuits do, but not basic repairs and replacements (even when inside the bathroom zones.) And I suggest that that should normally be done using  BS7671 as the standard.


    For notifiable works, what the LA require is convincing that the requirements of the building act are met. They are well aware that generally  this  includes evaluating methods that may not be in the approved documents, it is quite common for novel techniques in general building (think of straw bale houses and almost anything on 'Grand Designs' on TV for examples of that ).

    They just get very twitchy when you take them out on a limb electrically because commonly they need to call in external advice for that, and most easily contacted UK experts are understandably BS7671 centric.


    Mike.


  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    What is proof that you know that your work is to bs7671? 


    is the la or anyone else said prove to us that you know how to work to that standard how can it be evidenced
  • 0

     



    What is proof that you know that your work is to bs7671? 

    None - the person doing the works has to be trusted, but to be fair, that is true of anyone, regardless of a string of qualifications or if they have a nice logo on the van or not.

    However, if later it turns out that somehow they did not work to a safe standard, and there is some terrible unintended consequence then in all the usual sales of services and fraud sort of way, they may find themselves on the receiving end of a court summons. It must be said that is mercifully rare, and normally folk just get an angry customer asking them to come and fix it..

    The only other way is to employ two people, one to do the work and another to inspect, and larger companies may be set up that way, but it is not practical for sole traders.

    is the la or anyone else said prove to us that you know how to work to that standard how can it be evidenced

    I assume you meant ~If the LA or .

    They may want to discuss your qualifications or experience over the 'phone, they may be happy with your word for it, or prefer a copy of certificates etc,  or they may ( especially if their cowboy builder detector is already flashing and beeping **) insist that you (customer or contractor, not them) pay for a third party, agreed by both of you,  to come and take it to bits and inspect it, much as is done for a regularisation inspection.

    However this process is only triggered if  they are involved, and for running repairs of the kind you envisage, they never are.


    Regards Mike.


    ** They do not really have a 'cowboy builder' detector like that of course, but they pretty much behave as if they do.  I know for sure that certain names cause a collective groan at the office of our local Building Control inspectors  and they more or less draw lots for the short straw for the site visits, as they know there will be lots more visits and lots  of grief .

    Other builders they know they scarcely need to come out, except  for the mug of tea and the guided tour at the end,  as they can trusted to play by the rules anyway.



  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    many thanks mark great post.. my approach to everything is to do it right, be safe.
  • 0
    BS 7671 only requires certification for new installations, or alterations or additions to existing alterations. The original post only seemed to mention like-for-like replacements - which could be viewed as being in none of those categories, but simply maintenance or repair. You wouldn't call up a full BS 7671 process for simply plugging in an appliance, and arguably the only difference for a hard-wired appliance is ensuring the actual connections are safe - there'd be no need to go through the full BS 7671 design process for example.


    Anyone doing any kind of work needs to be competent to do that work of course. But simply connecting three wires to three terminals (or four or five in the case of the motorized valve) is a very small subset of the skills of a proper electrician - there's no reason why anyone else might not be competent in such a simple task. Certainly you'd want some verification that mistakes hadn't been made that might compromise the safety of the system - but (taking inspiration from some boiler installation instructions) a simple continuity check on the PE connection with a 'British Gas multimeter' is probably quite sufficient for that.


       - Andy.
  • 0
    AJJewsbury:

    a simple continuity check on the PE connection with a 'British Gas multimeter' is probably quite sufficient for that.


       - Andy.


    For something like replacing an electric shower, I think it should also be necessary as a minimum to check that that an RCD exists and that the test button triggers it.


  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Thank you for the replies. A shower in the bathroom is not something I would undertake even like for like.  Central heating pumps, zone valves etc I’m still unclear about  as these are not connected directly to the circuit. Are they part of an appliance? Similar to a white goods engineer replacing parts in a fridge or washing machine?

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