Electricity for garage/workshop in Bedfordshire recommend

[adrspach]

Hi guys. I would like to get proper electricity to my garage and workshop which are detached from my house as at present there is just some odd job from previous owner.
My Expectation is to have separate circuit for that reason with additional outside socket for garden.
I have approached few electricians but they were either cowboy (You know mate) style or shied away once I mentioned that I will need to have it legit with building regs and with the certificate for my insurance. I do understand that I will have to probably dig a trench for the cable and I a can do that.
So far I did not get even estimated cost proposal.
Can you recommend decent electrician? I am looking for quote that I can start somewhere. Thank you.

 

[guineafowl21]

You say the non-cowboys shied away when you mentioned a legit job/certificate, suggesting they were cowboys too.

Have you tried the NAPIT or NICEIC registers?

Offer to dig in some stout (4 or 6mm2) 3-core armoured cable and leave the ends curled up at the start and finish. Do a nice job, bury it deep, perhaps in conduit, and lay yellow warning tape on the cable and again near the surface. Then the job is just a nice, simple installation at either end, test and certificate.

 

[adrspach]

Straight from the beginning offered that with photo documentation of whole thing to spec supplied to me by them as I do believe that will be the hard part of the job.

 

[guineafowl21]

Can you think of any reason they are avoiding the job? Covid? Do you have a bad name with the trades in your area? :twisted:

Something about the workshop - is it a long way away? Metal framed/dodgy/not waterproof?

 

[adrspach]

To answer all your questions.
Apart from heating engineer and fireplace company have not used anyone else as most of the work I can do myself.
I use them all repeatedly and we have good working relationship.
If I did not want the certificate I would do it all myself and save myself a lot of hustle and money.
Not metal framed. One is wooden the other is brick built. Both completely waterproof.
The only thing it is about 20 metres from the fuse box and that is why I offered to dig it and lay the cable.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

IMHO - they have sensed that you are competent so will be able to see their crappy workmanship for what it is, which is why they don't want the job.

Good tradesmen are like parrots' teeth round here. I have had straight up incompetent, or really nice guys but unfortunately are unreliable. I can recommend a good chimney sweep though.

 

[guineafowl21]

Odd. I can’t recommend any electricians (I’m in Inverness), but at this stage I would, in the absence of willing electricians, do the job myself. Laying the cable is half of it, anyway. Assuming you have a TNCS earth, you can either export that directly or just use it to protect the armour cable, not connecting the earth at workshop end and installing TT (earth rod) at that end. 32A breaker house end, 4mm2 cable, RCD-protected garage consumer unit at workshop end.

For certification, ask for an EICR sometime after the job is done. The workshop is already powered so you’re not adding a new circuit, and, I would say, well within your rights to upgrade without building consent. If the trades won’t provide the service, sod ‘em.

 

[adrspach]

Problem with the present electricity is that the previous owner or whoever it was just pulled a spur out of one of the living room sockets took it through the wall out and under the pavement to the garage.
I am not sure what to thing about that one as the spur leads diagonally across the wall which I have found by accident under the plaster when I was doing some plumbing and went through it with my drill. That is not all as this cable is normal flat 3 strand which goes straight out of wall however when it appears in the garage it comes as armoured cable.
I just want to have it done properly that I can have peaceful sleep as well as better functionality.

 

[HappyHacker]

There is a register of Part P registered electricians, you would have to search for it as I do not have it to hand. I don't think I ever got a referral through it when I was registered.

All Part P does is enable the electrician to self certify that the installation meets building regs. You can pay for building control to do this and do the job yourself. They do not normally like doing this as they have to pay an electrician to do the various inspections and testing as the job progresses. Some of the Part P registration scams, sorry schemes, allow for third party certification of your own work not but many electricians do this except for people they know and have worked with in the past.

One thing to watch out for is the larger companies often only have one person Part P certified and they are supposed to check the work of the others in the company, but they often have 200 jobs per week to check so it becomes a paper exercise. As there is no checking on the quality of the "electricians' employed by these companies you often have no guarantee of the abilities of the people doing the work.

Have a search for Emma Shaw inquest to see what can go wrong.

Good luck.

 

[Neil Swann]

[email protected] certificated reliable and tidy worker local to Dunstable

 

[adrspach]

Thank you.

 

[MikeG.]

.......... do the job myself. Laying the cable is half of it, anyway. Assuming you have a TNCS earth, you can either export that directly or just use it to protect the armour cable, not connecting the earth at workshop end and installing TT (earth rod) at that end. 32A breaker house end, 4mm2 cable, RCD-protected garage consumer unit at workshop end.......

This is not a good solution. You cannot know the size of the cable required without knowing the loads and the distance. There is a reason electricians study for a few years.

And as for the "sod 'em" approach you advocate.......electrical certification is a requirement of the Building Regulations. You cannot sell a house without claiming compliance with the Regs, so you are suggesting either making this house unsaleable, or turning the owner into a perjurer.

 

[Woody2Shoes]

.......... do the job myself. Laying the cable is half of it, anyway. Assuming you have a TNCS earth, you can either export that directly or just use it to protect the armour cable, not connecting the earth at workshop end and installing TT (earth rod) at that end. 32A breaker house end, 4mm2 cable, RCD-protected garage consumer unit at workshop end.......

This is not a good solution. You cannot know the size of the cable required without knowing the loads and the distance. There is a reason electricians study for a few years.

And as for the "sod 'em" approach you advocate.......electrical certification is a requirement of the Building Regulations. You cannot sell a house without claiming compliance with the Regs, so you are suggesting either making this house unsaleable, or turning the owner into a perjurer.

+1 for the above. Besides, there are many more considerations - for example the simple words " ...32A breaker house end..." raise all sorts of questions as to to available capacity (physical and electrical).

 

[guineafowl21]

.......... do the job myself. Laying the cable is half of it, anyway. Assuming you have a TNCS earth, you can either export that directly or just use it to protect the armour cable, not connecting the earth at workshop end and installing TT (earth rod) at that end. 32A breaker house end, 4mm2 cable, RCD-protected garage consumer unit at workshop end.......

This is not a good solution. You cannot know the size of the cable required without knowing the loads and the distance. There is a reason electricians study for a few years.

And as for the "sod 'em" approach you advocate.......electrical certification is a requirement of the Building Regulations. You cannot sell a house without claiming compliance with the Regs, so you are suggesting either making this house unsaleable, or turning the owner into a perjurer.

^^ You’re both absolutely right, of course.

I have some sympathy for the OP, having done up a derelict. I started out telling people - ‘electrician for this, plumber for that’ and they all said, ‘you’ll be lucky.’ I didn’t know what they meant.

No-one ever turned up. Worse, they told me they’d turn up, then didn’t. When phoned at the agreed meeting time, they’d say, ‘sorry, I’m 30 miles away at another job.’ This would go on for weeks and months.

This was Aberdeenshire, with not enough tradesmen. Too much work, no incentive to pitch for jobs. They can be behave like I describe and still have too much work on. Providers’ market.

The OP must have bought the house with diagonal T&E exiting the wall unprotected, which isn’t certifiable. Would that make the house unsaleable? Would the OP sue the seller for perjury? I doubt it. You buy the house with many a horror unseen and when you find same, tut and say ‘hmm, the previous owner was a bit of a DIYer.’ Then you sort the problem properly.

So I will gladly concede that my post wasn’t really a viable solution. It was more an expression of the rock - no tradesmen - and the hard place - can I do it myself? - that the OP finds himself in. If he decides some amount of DIY is the solution, he won’t be the first, nor the last. And what he does will undoubtedly be better than what is there.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

And as for the "sod 'em" approach you advocate.......electrical certification is a requirement of the Building Regulations. You cannot sell a house without claiming compliance with the Regs, so you are suggesting either making this house unsaleable, or turning the owner into a perjurer.

There's an awful lot of houses with work done before various sections of the building regs. There's an awful lot of work that was done that should be subject to building control, but lacks the proper paperwork either through DIY or trademen doing work they aren't officially competent to do, or simply not doing the paperwork. I think of kitchen fitting (incompetent gas and electrical work) and some of the shocking woodburner installs by builders I've seen photos of - in new houses. My woodburner was done by a HETAS registered installer but I didn't get the proper paperwork, no flue data plate anywhere, etc etc.

If what you say is strictly true, hardly anyone would be able to sell their house. Of course, in this case it anyone has a problem with it it would be the work of moments to disconnect a non-certified job. Still, better to do it properly.

 

[AJB Temple]

From practical experience of having worked with a few electricians, quite a number, especially the more mature ones, simply cannot be bothered anymore to go through the Part P certification process.

The regulations are not at all difficult: IET Edition 18 (which I have read) does not contain any calculations or methodologies that are beyond normal people, but the certification courses are expensive: I looked into it purely out of interest and it was several thousand pounds.

For those inclined to do the work themselves then get Building Control certification there are a number of good books around now which take you through most typical domestic installations in a way that will comply with 18th regs edition. This includes calculation of all wiring sizes etc, and also how to test. Good quality test equipment (so that you can make sure you will pass BC inspections before they turn up) is not cheap: circa £500 for kit that will deal with a domestic single phase installation. I tend to like Megger equipment myself, but only because that is what my electrician uses (he does my Part P certifications) but even Screwfix sell so called part P test kits now from people like Kewtech (multifunction tester is £500 or £600 depending on what you choose). The knowledge to use it though is the challenge

I am not advocating anything here by the way. This is not advice.

 

[HappyHacker]

As a retired electrician I have very mixed views on the Building Regs and Part Pee situation.

There is little, probably no, enforcement of Part P and when house sales go through most solicitors do not proper checking of the status of building control compliance as they have not seen the house and can have little idea when changes were made and if thy needed approval. They just suggest taking out an insurance policy. The only prosecutions I have heard of were related to idiots who flouted gas regulations and had also done substandard electrical work so part p prosecutions were added for good measure.

Part P was introduced with the idea of allowing kitchen fitters etc to do minor works as domestic installers but they just ended up doing everything whether they were competent or not.

Insurance companies appear to have little interest in whether the work that caused a problem was certified or not but I would expect that to change.

Having seen and heard of dangerous and just incompetent work by "electricians" and DIYers but also seen excellent work by DIYers I have mixed feeling about what people should do when they cannot get competent tradesmen to do work for them.

The difficulty is ensuring compliance with increasing complex regulations which cause much discussion/argument about the actual meaning and how to implement them by those who have read them in detail and have a considerable understanding of electrickery. Anyone remember the 16th edition and the bonding of any bit of metalwork that anyone could possibly touch thereby increasing the probability of accidents. Now we have to use metal consumer units which can make TT installations less safe!

Then should you be installing AFDDs or surge protection and which level and where? Never mind maintaining equipotential zones, bonding or the implications of DNO linking N & E when repairing supply cables on TNS supplies.

Having said all that the local authorities are not sweeping electrocuted bodies off the streets and faulty/fake appliances seem to cause more casualties. A friend, who looked at the stats, suggested that if the expenditure on Part P had been put into making stair carpet fitting safer more lives would have been saved.

Being no longer registered under Part P, I am now deemed incompetent to undertake a very limited amount of domestic work, different amounts in Wales and England, but I am still considered competent, experienced and qualified to underwork on three and single phase systems on farms, public buildings, caravan sites and commercial premises!

Rant over

 

[guineafowl21]

And as for the "sod 'em" approach you advocate.......electrical certification is a requirement of the Building Regulations. You cannot sell a house without claiming compliance with the Regs, so you are suggesting either making this house unsaleable, or turning the owner into a perjurer.

There's an awful lot of houses with work done before various sections of the building regs. There's an awful lot of work that was done that should be subject to building control, but lacks the proper paperwork either through DIY or trademen doing work they aren't officially competent to do, or simply not doing the paperwork. I think of kitchen fitting (incompetent gas and electrical work) and some of the shocking woodburner installs by builders I've seen photos of - in new houses. My woodburner was done by a HETAS registered installer but I didn't get the proper paperwork, no flue data plate anywhere, etc etc.

If what you say is strictly true, hardly anyone would be able to sell their house. Of course, in this case it anyone has a problem with it it would be the work of moments to disconnect a non-certified job. Still, better to do it properly.

I think the contention is reality vs theory. This talk of unsaleable houses and perjury is probably right, but we all know that there are few older houses in Britain without some kind of work done under the radar. But they still sell, and the buyer sets to rectifying the mistakes. Then does a bit of ‘extra’ work, then sells, and the cycle continues.

 

[Sawdust Sam]

And as for the "sod 'em" approach you advocate.......electrical certification is a requirement of the Building Regulations. You cannot sell a house without claiming compliance with the Regs, so you are suggesting either making this house unsaleable, or turning the owner into a perjurer.

There's an awful lot of houses with work done before various sections of the building regs. There's an awful lot of work that was done that should be subject to building control, but lacks the proper paperwork either through DIY or trademen doing work they aren't officially competent to do, or simply not doing the paperwork. I think of kitchen fitting (incompetent gas and electrical work) and some of the shocking woodburner installs by builders I've seen photos of - in new houses. My woodburner was done by a HETAS registered installer but I didn't get the proper paperwork, no flue data plate anywhere, etc etc.

If what you say is strictly true, hardly anyone would be able to sell their house. Of course, in this case it anyone has a problem with it it would be the work of moments to disconnect a non-certified job. Still, better to do it properly.

I think the contention is reality vs theory. This talk of unsaleable houses and perjury is probably right, but we all know that there are few older houses in Britain without some kind of work done under the radar. But they still sell, and the buyer sets to rectifying the mistakes. Then does a bit of ‘extra’ work, then sells, and the cycle continues.

One thing to be aware of is that dodge diaganol cable probably has black and red cores assuming it’s twin and earth so it would be. Easier to argue it was like that when you bought the house depending on when you did buy the house of course and should the need arise. Domestic wiring is now had blue and brown cores so it’s easier to tell if any additions are relatively new or not assuming you didn’t squirrel away a few roles of black of red years ago to circumvent such a challenge in the future.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Keeping a secret supply of cable in the old colours - whoever would do that ? :wink:

Is it just my perception, or are building regs widely flouted by professionals anyway ? The stove install I mentioned earlier by a builder had studwork timber within a few inches of a stainless flex liner. You see staircases on Grand Designs etc with no ballustrade, let alone one 0.9m high which a 100mm ball can't pass through. Our kitchen was fitted out by "professionals" who plastered the cables into the walls with no trunking !

I have heard it claimed that the single biggest contribution to domestic safety in our times is not part P, not gas safe / Corgi, building regs or any other sort of regulations - but the invention of the oven chip !