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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You'd not condemn a building from 14 years ago, and require it to be rebuilt ? This is the electrical equivalent, an installation that is not even middle aged, as we can expect moderately loaded PVC wiring to serve for over a century.
Now 14 years ago we were not in the habit of stepping over the dead body of the previous user to take a shower, so we cannot argue that the need to update is pressing, the regs change is more one of ensuring best practice on new work. The intent being that slowly, as CUs are changed or showers fail and are replaced, then RCDs will be added.
In 40 to 50 years time I expect a shower sans RCD to be a rare thing, but not unknown, much as lighting circuits without CPC are today - being also 50 years or so behind the regs. For comparison, the 2 pin power circuits without CPC went from the regs in the 1940s, about 30 years prior to the lighting case, most of those have now gone, but there were still plenty in service in the 1970s ( I know I played with the as a kid..) Changing the regs formally starts the process, before that it is only the keen early adopters, but the actual change is only pretty much universal half a century later.
Mike.
People are expecting electrical installations from the 1960's with wooden rewirable fuse boards and lighting circuits that do not have a circuit protective conductor to be passed as satisfactory, because the installation has remained virtually unaltered since then and it complied with the regulations at the time.
From the Working Group Report of November 2017.
Issue 4 – Residual Current Devices (RCDs) 24.Working group members discussed whether to recommend a supplementary approach to mandatory inspection and testing by introducing a requirement for landlords to install RCDs in their properties. RCDs are devices designed to prevent people from getting a fatal electric shock if they touch something live such as a bare wire. RCDs are usually fixed to the electrical consumer unit and are designed to switch off electricity automatically if there is an earth fault; protecting against fatal electric shocks and fire caused by earth faults. The group noted that 62% of PRS households currently had RCDs installed5. 25.The group noted that whilst this would be a less burdensome option for landlords as it would require a one off cost, rather than regular costs of 5 yearly checks and costs of remedial works, RCD protection alone would not ensure tenants’ safety, as RCDs can become unreliable if not regularly tested. The group also noted that RCDs do not provide protection against overload or short-circuit. An electrical installation check might advise the fitting of RCD protection in some circumstances. The group concluded that RCDs alone were not sufficient to ensure electrical safety but that their installation should be recommended. However, the absence of an RCD does not necessarily mean that an installation is unsafe – the inspection and testing would be the determining factor of safety. The Group therefore felt that RCDs (and the appropriate testing of RCDs) should be recommended as good practice, rather than required by new regulations.
Recommendation 5: The installation of Residual Current Devices (RCDs) by landlords should be encouraged as good practice and set out in guidance.
So, where is the Government guidance on the requirements for RCDs in privately rented homes?
How are inspectors supposed to know what the official guidance is if nobody tells them?
Should I code a socket used outdoors without 30 mA RCD protection at a privately rented home C2, but code the electric shower without 30 mA RCD protection in the same home C3, if so why?
Perhaps more to the point, why should I even get involved?
Morning Mike
In the case of buildings you may not need/want to rebuild them but you would want flammable cladding removed from a HRRB wouldn't you?
As for your 14 year old installation aside from any non-compliances that would attract a C3 due to new safety measures introduced by each edition of BS 7671 you make the assumption that the installation was compliant at the time of installation which we know a substantial number have test certificates written by Pinocchio.
In the case of the Emma Shaw fatal accident case the 42 18 month old flats all had fabricated test results with the the electricians mate confessing, when interviewed under caution at the police station, he was not competent to inspect and test and had no qualifications and the test certificates were written up in the site hut with fabricated readings. He also said that in evidence to the coroner.
I tested some years ago 5 brand new houses on an ex MOD site in Essex for a charity before they were let to tenants. All 5 failed my I&T with series non-compliances despite the toilet paper test certificates.
How about an I&T I did on a brand new operating theatre with no 710 provisions at all and the test certificate saying N/A for special locations?
Why on a rare occasion I have I&T an installation I am not finding much to record do I say to myself, "Come on John wake up and get your backside in to gear and concentrate on what you are doing"?
I do not do much I&T now concentrating more on design, consultancy and work for the IET. I did do an investigation on a tower block, same cladding as Grenfell Tower, post fire where 10 people went to hospital. I did a lot of writing in my report!
What the reporter said in his article was just the tip of the iceberg.
Two more recommendations:
Recommendation 6: A PRS electrical testing competent person scheme should be set up which would be separate from the existing Building Regulations competent person scheme.
Recommendation 7: DCLG should commission the Electrotechnical Assessment Specification (EAS) management committee to consider the most effective method of assessing ‘competent PRS testers’ to carry out electrical inspections and tests.
That went well, didn’t it?
I think you have a problem Andy and Zoomup. You are not discriminating between additional protection, and faulty wiring. If a shower has a perfectly good Ze then it is not dangerous and the RCD has nothing to do. You are applying the "what if" argument to the installation, when the result from many millions is that there is not a problem. You say changing the CU would remove many of the C3s, but so would putting an RCD in the tails, a low cost solution. You might say this would be subject to tripping, but it would not if the installation and appliances are in good condition! I find it very rare to inspect an installation and not find some defect, but the question is much more complex than that, are these installations dangerous? In most cases not, it would take several problems at once to make them dangerous.
The problem with changes to the regulations is that it would be impossible to retrofit them to all (domestic?) installations, it would be ruinously expensive and there would not be sufficient competent labour available. As you well know there is a huge skills gap already, this would make it impossible. There are not enough skilled and honest inspectors already so what would happen? The industry would collapse, and be taken over by cowboys making a quick buck.
Your idea that the "Government" should legislate the problems away Zoomup is idealistic. In fact they know nothing, and come to the IET amongst others to take "advice". Unfortunately this is often tainted by vested interests and fails dismally. We do our best with BS7671 and GNs etc, but in some ways it is a hiding to nothing. The ideas are there but getting them to the right place is very difficult indeed.
Zoomup, Grenfell is immensely more complex than these press reports. It probably started with a loose connection in an appliance, but this happens in may appliances, and causes quite a number of fires. IF the fire policies had been satisfactory no one would have been hurt, and a single flat would have been damaged. The rest has taken FOUR years to examine, and not a single action or installation was satisfactory (my view having studied a great deal of it). The fixed electrics in the flat worked properly, both the RCD and CPD tripped during the fire. The rest followed because it appears that no one with any responsibility understood that fire compartmentation is very complex and very easily breached. Once this happens disaster is inevitable.
The biggest problem is that there are many buildings just the same, and there have been more fires showing exactly the same thing since, just none quite as serious.
The Press loves simple "shock horror" stories. The inquiry is such a story but wouldn't fit newspapers and is more complex than any whodoneit book.
I know full well that back in the 80's and 90's electricians who were wiring a terrace of houses would fully test one then use the test results for the whole block, but there were not any RCDs to test and generally someone did an insulation test at the tails before actually turning the supply on then a couple of random loop tests.
Those electricians would be gobsmacked at the amount of testing we are ending up doing these days with homes having far more circuits and RCBOs on all of them.
Life has moved on people cannot keep reporting stories that have been told for twenty years or more, I said to a customer I installed a couple of consumer units for a few weeks ago that they bore little resemblance to the first consumer unit I installed after I qualified over twenty years ago, having RCD protection and SPDs along with steel enclosures, the amount of testing I am doing now is far in excess of what I used to do with my first tester, my Robin KTS1620.
There will always be a bit of bending of the rules, there will always be some outright sharks and charlatans, but with the PRS EICRs no one has actually laid down the rules and there's nobody policing it.
I am sat at my desk in a spare bedroom at home, Western Power are inspecting their network from a helicopter, now that's the way to do it.
These are houses and flats being rented out with the tenants paying to live in a safe and comfortable homes, it is not at all unreasonable to expect landlords to update electrical installations that were installed over twenty years ago, I doubt may installations have an average spend of £50 per year maintaining the actual fixed installation, many even less.
Which really is absolutely negligible, but it more than enough to pay for an upgrade with a new consumer unit after twenty years.
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