What would a clean-sheet set of wiring regulations look like today?

Standardisation of wiring colours would be a useful step. Green/Yellow for ground/earth is almost there but the rest of the colours are scattered in function between the different countries. If I remove a light fitting in my Swiss apartment I may find a black wire and a yellow wire. The black is phase, the yellow is neutral. 

Redefining any of the current colours would merely increase the already huge legacy problem 

mapj1 said:

60-80 houses per phase on a half megwatt unit, fused at 400A /phase is a typical set-up on a modern-ish housing estate, older ones are less generous.

Maybe fewer than that in our road

The transformer a couple of doors down was replaced last year. The old one was 500 kW, built in 1959. Unfortunately, the plate on the new one is too far away to read with the naked eye, and too close for binoculars.

No need to train an army, it will train itself, but only at the last possible moment.

All you need to do is to convince people that they are competent to put in their own insulation, heat pump, battery storage ,etc ., and when it gets cold enough, they will. It would require general shift in the level of education  but its probably faster that trying to create a load of extra disinterested technicians in advance from kids who don't really want to learn how to do it.

Folk on here often disparage the work of the misguided enthusiast (but not as much as they do on the screwfix forum), vs some time served tradesman, and I agree there is some awful DIY out there, as well as some very good stuff,  but that is partly down to a culture of secrecy. It is worse for gas  ' you can't install a boiler without belonging to this club' is assured by keeping the info about  how to do it well under wraps, as if an educated customer might be a threat.

Well, a well educated customer should be a threat, to those who are on the inside but only doing a mediocre job. And there are a lot of those doing electricity too, not just drive by EICRs.

I therefore view things like the recent  plug-in solar developments with some amusement, as a sign of things to come, first on batteries and maybe heat pumps as well. Initially we all gather round and decide how best to regulate for an ideal super safe situation, but that prices too many folk out of the market, so we have to lighten up a bit, and accept some things that are not that great will happen, and eventually, when it gets tight enough, the rule makers eventually get out of the way again..
Mike.

Mike.

mapj1 said:

All you need to do is to convince people that they are competent to put in their own insulation, heat pump, battery storage ,etc ., and when it gets cold enough, they will. It would require general shift in the level of education  but its probably faster that trying to create a load of extra disinterested technicians in advance from kids who don't really want to learn how to do it.

Perhaps we should discuss means to write domestic wiring regulations (and associated regs) that allow even DIYers to easily do a competent job?

To eliminate the traps and pitfalls that get them into trouble.

Well maybe,  or at least publish enough info at a digestible level for the intelligent 14 year old, so Joe Public can know what to ask for and warning signs to watch to se if  they are being fobbed off with poor work.

As a slight aside my wife and  own a leasehold flat, and while ours has electrical and other works that I consider 'pretty good', we do have the  feeling of owning the 'best in show' prize bull as some of the other owners  in the building pay way over the odds for a very poor quality of works by 'professionals', not just sparks, but plumbing plastering and decorating too, who seem to know there is almost never any come-back.

I realise private rentals are the shallow end of the market, but if we are serious about looking after people,  a bit more awareness in the general population would be good.
However, it is straying a bit off this topic.

Mike

EIreland said:

Perhaps we should discuss means to write domestic wiring regulations (and associated regs) that allow even DIYers to easily do a competent job?

To eliminate the traps and pitfalls that get them into trouble.

A start would be to mandate lever terminals on all equipment. No more burnt neutrals because a screw wasn't tightened to the correct torque.

EIreland said:

Perhaps we should discuss means to write domestic wiring regulations (and associated regs) that allow even DIYers to easily do a competent job?

To eliminate the traps and pitfalls that get them into trouble.

In the days when people read real books, there were plenty of DIY manuals about that would guide you through the practical side well enough. I guess the difference these days that it's all random snippets of information from the internet (youtube videos etc) without anyone ensuring it's collated into a sensible "big picture".

When I were a lad the biggest problem in doing a proper job was getting hold of the right materials - the local shops would happily sell you a socket, back box and a cut length of cable - but grommets and green sleeving were unknown to them.

   - Andy.

AJJewsbury said:

the local shops would happily sell you a socket, back box and a cut length of cable

And a couple of screws to secure the back box. All in a paper bag, which you could re-use for lighting a fire.

AJJewsbury said:

In the days when people read real books, there were plenty of DIY manuals about that would guide you through the practical side well enough. I guess the difference these days that it's all random snippets of information from the internet (youtube videos etc) without anyone ensuring it's collated into a sensible "big picture".

I think the regulations are a lot more about risk assessments and such things than they have been historically. Especially with complex earthing arrangements for chargers and PME and all that. A lot simpler in the old days when everything was TT and TN-S!

I think a DIYer would do much better if they had comparatively simple iron cast rules to follow. That's one of the reasons I started this thread originally.

Labour is now so expensive relative to materials that I wondered if it was possible to make regs that could be followed almost blindly without getting people into trouble.

"For sockets you use a 20A RCBO, 2.5mm LZOH twin and earth and can have up to eight sockets" is a lot simpler than even the onsite guide process.

Indeed, we could probably spec 4mm T&E and still come out ahead, it's only 40p/m more expensive on TLCdirect and would render thermal overloads from insulation much less of a risk.

The more I think about this, the more I stand by my original suggestion that the Wiring Regulations would be similar to the First Edition.

It's a bit like the Irishman who is asked for directions to Dublin: "If I was going to Dublin, I would not be starting from here."

I think that the Regs and technical improvements have developed hand-in-glove. You can hardly mandate MCBs for ADS if they do not exist; additional protection could not progress from supplementary bonding to RCDs until they had been developed. Presumably some of the changes in BS 7671 are driven by previous tragic failures.

So, if you want to start with a clean sheet, I do not think that you can start with where we are now.

As I understand it the USA wiring regulations are a series of prescriptive codes to cover (hopefully) all eventualities. A  coded (qualified ) electrician in the USA can command a high salary, possibly more than his uncoded boss.

As I understand it the USA wiring regulations are a series of prescriptive codes to cover (hopefully) all eventualities. A  coded (qualified ) electrician in the USA can command a high salary, possibly more than his uncoded boss.