am I qualified to do EICRs?

Discussion in 'Electricians' Talk' started by Cornish Crofter, Mar 21, 2021.

  1. Cornish Crofter

    Cornish Crofter Active Member

    Hi

    Long time no seen.

    As some of you may remember I managed to acquire 2381 and 2391 in old currency.

    I have a fluke 1653 tester and have been doing the odd pir in my time on my own house. Hopefully this will be ok for 18th edition in the domestic environment

    I am refreshing myself at the moment.

    I dont belong to a part P scheme but iirc that wasn't a requirement to do PIRs.

    Plan is to do the 18th ASAP. I have ordered the newest 18th edition regs, on site guide and guidance note 3. I did have the same for the 16th ed but one of our cats used the box they were in as a litter tray.

    We need EICRs for our rental properties and one of the reasons I would like to do them myself is because I know the properties well, and have long since resolved the electrical installations in all of them. So I'm not going to spend any time trying to work out what goes where.

    We have 3 one beds and a 3 bed, so none of them are huge.

    They are all wired to 16th edition from what I can make out.

    One is a TT, the others are all PMEs I think.

    Plan is to read up in the guidance notes etc, practice on my own home then do them.
     
  2. ElecCEng

    ElecCEng Screwfix Select

    Get an up to date GN3 as a few things changed with 18th. Was IR testing and RCD if I recall. If you have 18th qual snd 2391 i’d say you’re competent for EICRs. A copy of the NAPIT codebreaker is useful for coding non-compliances.
     
  3. CeSparky1

    CeSparky1 Active Member

    You know all rental properties need to be done by the 1st of April? I believe there is some wriggle room if you cant find an electrician to do them in time. That gives you a week and a half to do the 18th edition and do the EICR's..
     
  4. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    I have read the law and I can't see any qualification other than "“qualified person” means a person competent to undertake the inspection and testing required under regulation 3(1) and any further investigative or remedial work in accordance with the electrical safety standards;" and "3.—(1) A private landlord(1) who grants or intends to grant a specified tenancy must—
    (a)ensure that the electrical safety standards are met during any period when the residential premises(2) are occupied under a specified tenancy;
    (b)ensure every electrical installation in the residential premises is inspected and tested at regular intervals by a qualified person; and
    (c)ensure the first inspection and testing is carried out—
    (i)before the tenancy commences in relation to a new specified tenancy; or
    (ii)by 1st April 2021 in relation to an existing specified tenancy."

    So yes qualification wise yes you can, but the question is insurance, you would need professional indemnity insurance.

    The EICR changed and code 4 was dropped, as interested in dangerous and potentially dangerous not compliant with any edition of BS7671. So we see things like "No additional protection for all circuits by a 30 mA RCD (not applicable if designed pre BS 7671) (701.411.3.3)" given a code C2 as BS 7671:2008 onwards allowed reduced earthing in the bathroom as long as it was RCD protected, so as to if a RCD is required depends on the bonding in bathroom and the supply type.

    Personally the report on Emma Shaw's court case shows how had there been RCD protection she would not have died, so to say lack of RCD protection is not potentially dangerous is hard to justify, remember we are not following BS 7671 as such but looking for potential dangers which goes both ways, and we have the use of inverter drives and switch mode power supplies and the type AC RCD to consider, with some Worcester Bosch boilers the manufacturers instructions state type A RCD's should be used, now it only says manufacturers instructions should be taken into consideration it does not say we need to blindly follow them, however it does mean no hard and fast rules.

    So as long as no one hurt then unlikely any court case so it does not matter what you pass or fail as no one is really going to check up on what you pass or fail if no one is hurt. Only when things go wrong will anyone worry about what you allowed, and then you will have the HSE going through the property with a fine tooth comb. At which point you have to justify why you did what you did or did not do, and the HSE and courts have it easy, as they don't need to decide if it was landlord or inspector at fault as they are one and the same.

    So yes you can do your own EICR, but not sure if that is a good idea?
     
  5. ElecCEng

    ElecCEng Screwfix Select

    In the case you refer to it would appear that the installer and QS did’t carry out testing correctly (just read the news report, not the case in any detail). I would imagine the OP would be far more likely to carry out proper IR testing, which would likely have shown a low reading on the boiler cct with a screw through it, than the “£50 a go, it’s all too difficult to link out the dimmers, remove the bulbs etc.” types.

    The fact there was no RCD protection in such a new property is just bad design and the HSE/courts could possibly have done more to chase the designer/company on that.
     
  6. rogerk101

    rogerk101 Screwfix Select

    As an Electrical Engineer with a BSC Eng (Elec) Hons degree from a respected university, I would be considered an electrically competent person. However, I am not a member of a pirate ship (e.g. NAPIT), I don't carry a multi-million pound liability insurance, and I don't own an appropriate test tool that has been serviced within the last 12 months. As such, much as it pains me, I still have to hire a spark to carry out EICRs in my rental property.

    The OP will have to do the numbers to see whether paying the annual membership fee to join a pirate ship, getting his test tool recalibrated annually, and taking out insurance are not more expensive than getting a spark in to do an EICR. FWIW I'm in the South East and 2 weeks ago, I paid a spark £130 for an EICR.
     
  7. ElecCEng

    ElecCEng Screwfix Select

    You don’t need to be a scheme member to carry out EICRs.

    EDIT: £130 is a good price. We should be charging £150-200 per EICR, we can’t because the cowboys highlighted by @Comlec in a recent post con the public into thinking less than £100 is an acceptable price.

     
  8. rogerk101

    rogerk101 Screwfix Select

    Agree, but you do need the recently recalibrated test tool and the insurance, and most insurance providers charge much more for policies that don't come through a pirate ship. In fact the only than that's worthwhile about the pirate ships is the discounts that they negotiate with insurance providers.
     
    ElecCEng likes this.
  9. MGW

    MGW Screwfix Select

    I would agree closed shop was made illegal and the pirate ships are in essence running a closed shop so pirates is a good name. However I remember well sending a PAT testing machine for calibration, it had set in a cupboard unused for years so although old model it was as new. Decided to use computer software and it was sent for and arrived only to realise it needed a figure entering in the boxes for insulation resistance etc. But the PAT tester has just a pass and fail light, so asked the software people who said enter the figure on the calibration certificate, but on looking at the certificate there was nothing, so returned the software, however there clearly should have been a figure on the certificate, but it was a traceable record, so no problem, I used excel and wrote a word for each calibration result knowing I could use the replace command once found the figures.

    Well it seemed it had been given to local supplier who had in turn taken it to the calibration house, so all done through a third party, and I kept asking for the figures, and after 2 months or so they finally admitted they could not find the traceable records.

    So the PAT tester was sent for calibration once again, but it seems it was too old, and used old pass figures now superseded so it could not be set to new figures, and we would require a new PAT tester, and all my PAT testing records were now useless. So after that we used the known results method, so we would test some thing be it a resistor, or what every, and had two of each tester, and worked on the idea they are unlikely to both go wrong at the same time, so weekly tests confirms they have not drifted, the calibration of test equipment is as much as a scam as the schemes. Just a way to make easy money. The schemes it seems insist on using calibration houses, but if not a member of a scheme then no need, as long as you test, in fact everyone should have a socket etc at their premises they test on a regular basis, as if the instrument does drift, you want to limit how many tests need retesting.

    However in some aspects @rogerk101 is correct, there are two problems, one the cost of insurance, and two should anything go wrong and lets face it no ones perfect, it would be hard to show genuine error rather than a landlord trying to get around the law. As @ElecCEng said with the Emma Shaw case it was not blamed on lack of RCD protection, it was not required back then, and there were many in the frame, the installation electrician left a loop of cable, the plaster put a fixing through the cable, the plumber failed to glue the tun dish, the immersion heater did not have a safety over temperature cut out, the semi skilled tester did not enter the results shown on the tester we assume it said OL but fudged up results in the mess hut, in spite of Emma saying there were sparks the person she phoned said turn water off first, and the person blamed was the foreman for using semi skilled labour.

    Personally I would have said plugging in a tester and recording the readings was not rocket science, and was well within what the semi skilled man could do, however it seems the EIC was raised showing the semi skilled man as the person who did all the inspection and testing so clearly some thing wrong which was not reported. But with many of these court cases we raise an eye brow at the result and say there by the grace of good go I.

    But we want to show if some thing goes wrong that we did all that could be expected, and being the landlord and inspector is clearly a conflict of interests, which is all well and good unless some thing does go wrong.

    Now both my father-in-law and mother lived in houses without full RCD protection, only the shower was protected, and we never did do anything to father-in-laws house, but my mother had dementia and poor eye sight, and was found to have put an extension in a bucket of water as she saw the neon and thought it was on fire. Lucky she was not injured. We have no idea of who visits a rented home, we may know who lives there, but not who visits, and people do daft things. I got mother house rewired and RCD protection, I got some one else to do it for speed, would have cost £500 per week for mother in care home, so wanted it done and dusted before she came out of hospital, I had used her going into hospital as a window to get it all done.

    Now if for example you pre-inspected the home, and decided it needed a load of work, like new consumer unit, part rewire of say the lighting circuit, which would include the bathroom, so you registered the work with the LABC who in turn issued a completion certificate then that would be different, as long as you included the whole home testing on the EIC submitted to LABC then if they accept it, you have all you need for 5 years, and since independent inspector involved in the shape of the LABC inspector then you can't be accused of a cover up.
     
  10. The Happy Builder

    The Happy Builder Screwfix Select

    Copies of the relevant books £120, three day 18th Edition training course and exam £490, possible loss of income whilst completing the training course and taking the exam plus traveling expenses £700, new test equipment £900, insurance £700, sundries such as report forms, labels, etc £100.

    That’s the basics I paid for in the run up to the introduction of the landlords EICRs to get set up just over £3k.

    I actually spent another £1k on a new desktop, a report software subscription, a backpack tool bag and tools to put in it, because a lot of the flats don’t have parking and I need to walk the last part of the journey to them.

    Obviously I already had other relevant qualifications, van, tools, ladders,etc though my testers were okay the leads and other parts were needing attention or replacement and I had a set of three testers, so I bought a new Megger multifunction tester with rechargeable batteries, however have already paid to have an annual calibration and I am waiting for a new set of test leads to arrive because after eighteen months the original test leads are beyond use and I’m using some of another tester.

    So you aren’t going to save money by doing your own EICRs if you are going to get set up correctly, you will only be doing it because you want to unless you are planning to start contracting work.

    As yet I have not recouped the money I spent, but there have been exceptional circumstances with the Covid lockdowns.

    No, I will not do cheap EICRs.
     
    ElecCEng likes this.
  11. rogerk101

    rogerk101 Screwfix Select

    So it would seem that you need to be doing several EICRs PER WEEK in order to make any savings.
    If you want to be a landlord, be a landlord, but do so while letting sparks be sparks! :D
     

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