Builders and Electrical Work

Consultation service: Suitable for those planning home refurbishment or have concerns about builder’s electrical work…

Home extensions whether up, down or sideways are an increasingly popular way of gaining additional family space that avoids the extreme costs of moving house.
While many builders are very good builders (though there are many horror stories to the contrary), many of them also do their own electrical work on your property using their own people who are sometimes not competent, qualified or registered electricians.
Unfortunately, many clients don’t realise there’s a problem until months or years down the line when an electrical failure becomes an ‘OMG they did what?’ moment which could have caused danger to your family, your property and may cost a lot of money to put right.

Many call outs we receive turn out to be faults directly related to previous building work and can often open a can of worms in many ways.

Here are some classic scenarios encountered:

  1. Tripping circuit/s found to be one or more nails or screws through cables, or a cable crushed between timbers
  2. Failures related to under-sized cables being used and overheating/melting
  3. Cables joined using inappropriate connectors that melted in the wall
  4. Oversized breakers used that will never trip in the event of a fault
  5. Earth cores not connected through leaving no earth protection on parts of or the whole circuit
  6. Inappropriate downlighters not installed properly which cause severe melting and risk of fire
  7. Poorly wired fittings with loose screws and connectors, and some with crossed polarity presenting danger to all users
  8. New consumer units poorly installed and not wired correctly
  9. Installation that generally fails to meet regulations and good practice standards
  10. Unnecessary additional circuits installed instead of properly extending existing circuits which can add a lot of unnecessary cost for you
  11. New installation not tested, no electrical certificate to be seen this side of the equator, and obviously not notified to the local authority

Here’s how to avoid the pitfalls:

  1. If your builder offers electrical work as part of your deal, ask them the name and registration organisation of their electrician, and check it with that registration organisation before going ahead. This is especially relevant if your builders are from countries where attitudes to electrical standards and safety may be quite different to ours!
  2. If you see something that looks iffy and you feel fobbed off by the builder, get a qualified and registered independent electrician to verify the issue out of hours
  3. Ensure that the consumer unit has a tested date sticker on it
  4. Ensure that you receive a proper test certificate and building control notification BEFORE making final payment
  5. Ensure that the certificate has the details of the electrician allocated to your job (with his registration number)

Ask a PRO!

phone: 07885 780117

email: Contact by Email