by ericmark »
Fri Aug 11, 2017 8:30 pm
The problem with installing electrics it may not be the guy installing which makes a fatal error.
There was a very good report about the death of a woman, the plaster hit the cable then the plumber did not glue the tun dish, then the water heater went wrong causing water to go everywhere, then when the woman went to turn off the stop cock she was electrocuted.
It seems the electrical firm used semi-skilled labour, his job was simple, plug in a tester, push the button and make a note of the reading. When the plaster damaged to cable this would have resulted in the reading being infinity, however instead of simply writing down infinity, he went into the tea cabin and asked others what to put down, so sent in a set of fudged results.
One would have expected the semi-skilled guy to be found guilty, however it was the foreman who was found guilty for using semi-skilled labour and not a skilled man.
From that court case we realised the testing must be done by a skilled person, even though it is only a case of plugging in the tester and pressing a button and writing down what it says, the court says that person must be skilled.
You can get all the test equipment, but you need something to show you have the skill to use it. The LABC has the task of assessing if you have that skill, I found the LABC was rather hard to convince that my son had the ability to do the inspection and testing in spite of having a C&G2391 certificate, in the end they allowed me to do it, when my son said if anyone was to find the installation was not to the required standard, he would need to be higher qualified than me, and I had a degree in electrical and electronic engineering.
I am sure many people do things which are technically illegal, and as long as nothing goes wrong they get away with it, I am sure there has been times when I have not been watching my speedometer and have ended up speeding, but I have only been caught once, and since no one was killed as a result all I got was a fixed penalty.
I think you could likely use either supply and make a good job, my problem is I can't see what you are doing, and it would be so easy to make an error. Ring final circuits are a real problem to test to ensure there is no over load, I would not be happy to try to explain how to do it using a forum.
