Inadequate inspections on the safety of wiring in buildings across England are increasing the risk of fires, E&T has found. A flawed regulatory system has sparked a race to the bottom, with some businesses profiting at the expense of the public’s safety.
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I suspect there may be quite a few dodgy EICRs. The real question of course should not be about that, nor should it be about disappointment at more or less prosecutions. These are totally spurious, you may as well be disappointed at the number of sparks who do not eat salad with their cheese sandwiches, this too will prematurely kill a few folk a year.
What actually matters is how many dangerous (not just not to latest regulations, but actually dangerous ) electrical installations are out there, and what fraction, if any, of those will be found and corrected only as a result of an EICR. These are the only EICRs that have any safety merit the rest are just dross to be ploughed through to find them.
That needs measuring, and properly, not just by chatting to a few disgruntled contractors over a pub lunch.
note that many faults may be corrected anyway as a result of general refurbishment or repairs when something actually fails, and by the same token new hazards may be introduced between inspections by badly done work.
It may be better in the cost -effective sense, to do a simpler test, such as walking around looking for smashed fittings and chafed wires and bits of live copper poking out the wall, (*) without doing a full blown test, as far more properties could be tested, and that would still catch common dangerous cases. Add a plug in RCD test, and a wander lead and continuity buzzer to see if earth reaches the appliances and far points of a few circuits, and you may well catch nearly all truly dangerous.
* not joking - that is the level of thing that can happen and that needs fixing urgently, not fretting about measuring Zs to 3 decimal places to allow for 230V instead of 240 or the minutiae of the latest regs edition.
Mike.
I suspect there may be quite a few dodgy EICRs. The real question of course should not be about that, nor should it be about disappointment at more or less prosecutions. These are totally spurious, you may as well be disappointed at the number of sparks who do not eat salad with their cheese sandwiches, this too will prematurely kill a few folk a year.
What actually matters is how many dangerous (not just not to latest regulations, but actually dangerous ) electrical installations are out there, and what fraction, if any, of those will be found and corrected only as a result of an EICR. These are the only EICRs that have any safety merit the rest are just dross to be ploughed through to find them.
That needs measuring, and properly, not just by chatting to a few disgruntled contractors over a pub lunch.
note that many faults may be corrected anyway as a result of general refurbishment or repairs when something actually fails, and by the same token new hazards may be introduced between inspections by badly done work.
It may be better in the cost -effective sense, to do a simpler test, such as walking around looking for smashed fittings and chafed wires and bits of live copper poking out the wall, (*) without doing a full blown test, as far more properties could be tested, and that would still catch common dangerous cases. Add a plug in RCD test, and a wander lead and continuity buzzer to see if earth reaches the appliances and far points of a few circuits, and you may well catch nearly all truly dangerous.
* not joking - that is the level of thing that can happen and that needs fixing urgently, not fretting about measuring Zs to 3 decimal places to allow for 230V instead of 240 or the minutiae of the latest regs edition.
Mike.
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