Qualifications - Domestic Electrics Next?

[VicMallows]

Following on from our recent discussions on requirements or otherwise to use 'certified' fitters, especially for Gas work. Reading the latest IEE Review (Institution of Electrical Engineers) this morning I note that there are plans to extend Building Regulations Controls to domestic electrical wiring. You would either have to have work done by an 'approved competent person' (who presumably will have to pay for the priviledge of being approved) ... or pay a fee to building control for an inspection. Even as a Chartered Electrical Engineer, I probably wouldn't be able to certify my own work!

That should give the boating beurocrats something else to enjoy.

As for servicing your own car or the boat engine...........heaven forbit mending the washing machine or dishwasher.

Vic





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[Guest]

Soon ....

There will be little Certificate stickers on Door Knobs, Car Keys, Toilet Brushes .........

We will not be allowed to sleep, eat, walk, Uh hum, etc. without first having first accredited inspection and certification of fit for purpose !!

Soon it will be beyond the jokes and reality - or am I just plain assuming something that will not happen ....


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ...
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.qqbaltic.com/index.html>http://www.qqbaltic.com/index.html</A> For all those disbelievers ! /forums/images/icons/cool.gif

 

[graham]

As the greatest number of accidents occur in the home why not demolish all houses and save the nation from a terrible fate???????

Roll on some common sense in this country.

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[steve_cronin]

Re: Soon ....

I had a university room mate (for a short time) who believed that everything should be regulated. That was in the 70s.

I discovered fifteen years later that he had suffered a mental breakdown a few years after graduating.

Brave new world?

Steve Cronin

<hr width=100% size=1>The above is, like any other post here, only a personal opinion

 

[Talbot]

This has already happened in Australia, where this sort of nonsense was introduced following pressure from the plumbers and electricians "to save lives" . Now they have a monopoly and you are not allowed to work on your own house to even add a ligt fitting or outdoor tap unless you have the appropriate certificate - which of course means that registered electricians and plumbers are the ones who can retire at 45. When some pimply youth who has done a 6 month course can charge £100 for a visit before even starting the job - (TV repair person last week - got told to go away and procrastinate /forums/images/icons/smile.gif) then it is time for the revolution. I am really p**sed orf at the encroaching control freak system that I never voted for.

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[sailorman]

the country is run by school teachers & the like, who r "empire builders" backed-up by politically correct polititions / insurance companies imposing unwanted & restrictive conditions upon the rest of us.
WHAT HAPPENS IN
FRANCE
BELGIUM
SPAIN
GREECE
ET AL
they look after themselves FIRST, we just pay for unwanted beaurocrats imposing unwanted & badly interpreted laws.
come the revolution

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[Avocet]

It's a very sad state of affairs indeed. A while back I wanted to buy a very mildly accident damaged car as a bit of a project. As it was an insurance "write off" (it wasn't worth very much to start with) my insurers wanted an "engineer's report". I told them that I was a Chartered Engineer and that I had been responsible for much of the structural design work on the particular car involved and asked if I'd do. The girl at the other end said "I'm sorry sir, but you have to be a qualified motor engineer".

Oh how we laughed!

The world's gone barking mad!

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[webcraft]

Schoolteachers

Er . . .

the country is run by school teachers & the like

What are you on about?

I occasionally work in a school . . . I can assure you that legislation is made by politicians and civil servants, not schoolteachers. The average teacher is no fonder of legislation or regulation for its own sake than anyone else, and certainly has no say in running the country.

I presume your schooldays weren't the happiest of your life?

- Nick

<hr width=100% size=1><font size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.bluemoment.com>http://www.bluemoment.com</A></font size=1>

 

[poter]

Vic hate to say this but you probably ain't qualified......
I have been fitting , specifying, & generally playing around with gas boilers, pipework etc. for 25 odd years. but all of a sudden I ain't qualified to touch it!

One point: its only a gas pipe when you put gas into it, up until then its just a pipe!

I really think its time to leave again, I have had my dose of reality now ....
just let me go.....pleeeeeeeeeeeeeseee HE He !!!! ha ha!! blurbbbbb.


poter.



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[sailorman]

Re: Schoolteachers

skool wasnt that bad.
it just seem that nobody is allowed to do anything any more with-out a bit o paper,
cant cross the road unless they press a button to absolve them selves of the responsibility.
people building empires dishing out paper & making the rest of us to conform

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[Alex_Blackwood]

Sorry to say that I think it has already happened. If you want to do any domestic wiring you have to have the relevant C&G certificate in the IEE 16th edition, and a different certificate if you want to be qualified to inspect it AND yet something else if you want to design installations. All these certificates require attending a course at the local FE establishment and paying £100's for the priveledge.
After some 40 odd years in the "Trade" (38 at sea as Electrical Officer/ETO) with experience in running a dept. of up to 10/12. I am not quallified to install, or. inspect my own domestic wiring. If I installed a socket and anything went wrong my home insurance would be void.
The galling thing is that I consider the standards of installations and workmanship to be infinately inferior to the standards when I served a 5year apprenticeship in the 50's/60's. And that is not sour grapes or being a miserable old f**t!

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[Rohorn]

Hi.....you ring a bell. I'll try to keep calm.
Since simply messing about in boats is largely why we do it. These bureaucratic and commercially inspired impositions will kill the market they try to regulate.
We do it to learn, to excercise, to think for ourselves, to achieve self reliance and to give pleasure to family and friends.
I don't favour total anarchy but I feel there should be an independent grouping or movement to counter this miserable trend. Maybe it starts here?
What form could it take?
Cheers....R


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[richardandtracy]

I've had the same situation myself.

When I wanted to put some seat belts in my motorhome I found it had to be approved by a 'qualified engineer'. I've been approved by the CAA as a stress engineer for the design, stress & sign-off of modifications to airframes and interiors - so I'm probably pretty well qualified to say whether a seat belt fixing is OK (having actually been involved with seat & seatbelt design on several occasions too). However.. I was told cars/vans are different, so my CAA approval was irrelevant. From the insurers I'm led to believe that load works differently in cars/ vans to how it works in aircraft, so someone with an O level & a C&G cert can approve it, but not a CAA approved stress engineer.

For some reason, the insurers were unable to give an intelligent reply when I asked how the load knew it was in a car/ van, and so had to work differently to the way it did in an aeroplane. (I've had the same sort of tripe spouted at me from boat designers too).

I didn't laugh. I was too blinking furious to laugh.

Regards

Richard.


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[sailorman]

"nil iligimo carborudum"
sorry about the spelin but didnt do latin

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[roger]

For Norway certainly and I suspect for much of the EU as well you cannot legally do any work with electricity or gas or even installing aparaffin stove in a hut without certification. Its as much as anything an attitude to safety.
I am amazed when I see in a Scandinavian wooden building (chandlers or hardware store) gallon polythene containers of acetone sowed in rows on open shelves. It is clearly crazy as acetone is one of the most imflammable liquids going.
I do have some sympathy with requirements for house wiring. The previous owner of our haose had methods all his own. I found most of the 13 amp sockets in the house had no earthing at all and were connected to the lighting circuits. _ and the cooker had no fuses at all!!
Its ok and rewired now.

<hr width=100% size=1>Roger

 

[VicMallows]

What did you expect. The term 'Chartered Engineer' doesn't exist in their (human or computer) databases.

When phoning for insurance quotes I always give my occupation as such. The response is *always* "is that the same as a Chartered Surveyor; or a Chartered Accountant". To get a quote at all I have to settle for "engineer" ... which means precisely nothing as it stands.

Guess though our proffesional institutions have just a bit to answer for in that respect.

Vic



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[Novice]

Amen to that - J.I.Mead CEng MIChemE

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[halcyon]

I'm finding that even 'engineer' is going out of favour.

Brian

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[VicMallows]

I tried 'Ingineur' when working in Germany. (I was Eur Ing at the time .. since abandoned as waste of money). Company I was with wouldn't even let me put in on my business card .... said it had no 'authority' in Germany!!

Vic

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