You can choose to study to become a Domestic Electrician or a Professional Electrician.

No words....

You can call yourself an electrical engineer .... if you feel so inclined.

There was some chap on the TV this morning who after being made redundant retrained as a domestic electrician over a 2 week intensive course. He declared himself to be fully qualified and UK registered.

Legh

Legh - like me - you're so busy - its day time TV..........I saw that 2 week wonder too.


He did stress it was a very intensive course though, like really intensive............stressful stuff.


(I can only assume that he knew something about electrics before hand?)

It might just be me, but you kinda know what they mean


I did an indentured apprenticeship in heavy industry sectors so I was always perfectly happy considering the house bashers as a sub set of "electricians" - perhaps unfairly, but such is life.


I still see things like the distinction between 3 phase and single phase being used as differentiators by some in the trade, and even the IET seem to be creating this "two tier" arrangement by means of specific regulations that only apply to domestics


Regards


OMS

Well if there was an 'unprofessional electrician' qualification created, there are a few folk out there whose work may qualify them for it. 


At the weekend I put my head into the ceiling floor void between a flat we have recently bought and the floor of the flat above.  I then withdrew it again pretty smartly.

The gap is about 2 feet, more or less in places, as neither the floor above or our ceiling are exactly flat.

Wiring that supplies the upstairs flat dangles down in loops like festoon onto our ceiling, wiring for our flat is snaking over, under and between it, then later some red fire alarm cable going nowhere but to a JB and then coming back has been pushed through the lot, lots of dangling cut ends, fortunately  most seem to be dead, comprising off-cuts and tails of  every type of cable type from about 1900 wiring to present day seems to be in evidence. Oh and the submains that feed the flat seem to be 16m TnE with the reduced earth with no particular route taken.

I'm sure the contractors to the freeholders when the flats were first fitted out were suitably cheap...

I can well and truly beat Mike’s void.


I have to go and survey a flat that needs new storage heaters by the 1st April, I first looked at it a couple of years ago, there is an exceptionally large void under the floor of this third floor flat that has a couple of fridges and a cooker in it that would not look out of place in the Black Country museum or the like.


Andy B.

In fact the landlord has several buildings where you can go indoor pot holing, I have been to one of them this evening and impressed him with my new Ferret camera, using it to find the pressure reduction valve the plumbers have hidden in a boxing


Because domestic electricians are 5% plumbers as well, the replacement electric shower I took with me was returned to Screwfix after I removed the failed PRV that was downstream of the hidden one.


Just what is it that domestic electricians do?


Andy B.

the building sounds like fun. Large voids probably deserve a fire detection mechanism of their own then, especially if in addition to cut live ends,  they also include sources of ignition like a cooker....

You remind me that we also need an 'unprofessional plumber' qualification, for those chaps fitting uphill drains and air locking hot water pipes.

Nearer London someone would be renting that void out as another room.