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I met an engineer today who has been in the business for the last 20years and during our conversation the subject of Electrical Testing came up. It subseqeuntly became evident that this engineer never performs electrical Earth & Contunuity Tests and did not have the necesssary test equipment i.e. Insulation Tester ( Megger) worse still he could see no reason why he should adopt such measures!
Does anyone have any printed knowledge or links to this specific area which I could pass on. This engineer worried me espeacially when after I gave him my view of this matter he told me that the customers RCD should take care of any electrical failures !
Any Further Thoughts ? ❓
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
squadman wrote:I met an engineer today who has been in the business for the last 20years and during our conversation the subject of Electrical Testing came up. It subseqeuntly became evident that this engineer never performs electrical Earth & Contunuity Tests and did not have the necesssary test equipment i.e. Insulation Tester ( Megger) worse still he could see no reason why he should adopt such measures!
i can see your engineers point!. You can megger as much as you like, and a satisfactory reading is great, but the most important thing in my mind is a good earth at the socket and a good earth bond to the machine.
how many engineers megger the machine and think that is all that is neccesary to be safe? All an insulation test will do is show up components that have either failed or are about to fail, the problem as i see it is that if all readings are ok at the time of the test, a future earth leakage could be dangerous if the house wiring has no (or insufficient) earth. 😯Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
Of course that goes without saying does it not ! the electrical integrity of the ring supply must 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} with the correct polarity and earth.
I was making the point that NO test was being performed either on the appliance under repair or a polarity check on the ring. If the insulation is faulty on a appliance the insulation test would reveal that fact as would a check of the ring. As I see it the responsibilty is upon the service technican to ensure that a full test is performed at the outset of a repair and again upon completion of that repair.
Not only are you then protecting your own personal safety but that of the customer. In any event if a incident were to occur following a repair, the person who performed that repair would be the last person to have touched that faulty appliance and I would say that as that person was engaged as a professional competent person he/she would in the eyes of the law be responsible for failing to ensure that the appliance was left in a safe condition.
I can recollect not so many years ago a Heating Engineer who performed service work on a boiler system. That system had a serious earthing problem which due to the type of consumer unit fitted failed to show the problem in the obvious ways. The engineer had NOT performed the relevant safety checks and that failure resulted in the death of the householder! . That death would have been avoided had the engineer performed such tests without question.
Needless to say that the H & E became involved and subsequent tests showed that the engineer had failed to carry out any safety tests on that installation and had been incompetent also. That engineer was charged with manslaughter !
How many of us carry out these tests I wonder ? What are the legal implications of our work ? Can we be complacent ?
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
Your car (or van’s) MOT is an anuual event. All it proves is that at the moment at which the Certificate is signed, your vehicle is safe. The testing of an appliance is exactly the same. At the point at which you tested it, it passed. The minute you leave, you have no idea what will happen.
However, to satisfy your conscience if nothing else, you’ve got to do it!
Regards,
Chris.Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
I agree with you totally, Squadman. I religiously meggar every machine that I work on before and after the repair. (ok sometimes it’s really not practical with built in cookers for example)
I could not sleep nights if I thought that there was any possibility that someone could get injured by anything that I had left in an unsafe state.
I pray for the day when this industry is regulated. It SHOULD already be regulated in the same way that Gas engineers have to pass stringent tests to get their CORGI registration.
Watch this space… It will come.
Bob
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
Fine sentiments Bob but in practice regulation will probably mean a fat subscription to some trade association just for the privilege for having the required letters after your name. This seems to be what’s happened with the Part P Building Regs, which fortunately don’t apply in Scotland (yet). I would be happy enough to get extra qualifications but if I also have to pay £1000+ a year to some fat cats in London I will be pulling out of the appliance repair trade.
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
I would agree with testing an appliance and it’s supply, especially after a repair or, more accurately, before re-connection to supply for use as until you are satisfied that the apliance is 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} it strikes me that you could end up chasing ghosts.
However, to play Devil’s Advocate, there’s a little flaw in this plan for many of us. Commercial reality.
The commercial reality is that we do not get paid enough to allow the time to do this, especially on a lot of contract work where we have to give an engineer ten calls a day minimum to make ends meet. Engineers are not allowed the time to carry out the checks that they perhaps should.
Then I’d argue that the rates, both on contract and many chargeable calls, do no reflect the work, equipment and training required to be complete in safety checks. This is especially true when it comes to many contracts as the rates paid do not, in any way, reflect the time and care required to ensure 100{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} (or as close as you can get) safety.
Simple arithmetic tells me that if I were to drop a call a day to allow the engineers more time to more fully check every repair or installation that it would increase every call, every day by about £5 per call. Clients would not accept that increase in cost unless it was enforced by law and end consumers would simply scrap more appliances.
So whilst I agree with the principal and nobel ideas, I can’t see it being made to apply without legislation to ensure that it is done.
K.
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
I like the comparison with the annaul MOT test, the logic that it was alright when I tested it. I am not talking about six months after the repair but the days and immediate weeks that follow any repair. If it can be proven that an engineer left a dangerous appliance either by not testing or by leaving such a fault him/herself then the Health & Safety Excutive would be the body to next look at your repair and working practices.
In the real world I know that we all get pressed for time and I am very familair with doing 12 or 13 calls a day travelling some 150 miles, I used to work directly for a manufacturer for five years. They had a policy that EVERY repair WOULD be tested and the result recorded on the worksheet.
It cannot be a matter of chance but they realised that should an incident happen then it would be their engineer and them that would be under the spotlight. Personally for the sake of 10 mins extra I do these checks as if there were to be a serious problem loosing a fiver may well be the least of my worries compared to a large finacial claim and litigation against my company, Public Liablity Insurance may even be in question if it could be shown that the company or its staff failed to ensure even basic safety rules.Yikes ! Its time I stopped going on, we all know the score, dont’ we ?
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
I did a TOPS course in 1987/88 before I began my self employment. The course was entitled DAPSE which I think stands for Domestic Appliance Service Engineer. I have rarely referred to myself as an “engineer” preferring the term “repairman”.
On that course we were instructed on how and when to do earth continuity and megger insulation tests. No instruction whatever was given regarding how to test for a good earth at the supply socket. I did have one of those plug in polarity testers one time but it fell into disuse and got lost 😳 .
I hope one of you more safety conscious engineers will now come forward and tell us exactly how to check the supply earthing properly, preferably in a way that doesn’t take too long.
MikeRe: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
It seems to me to be beyond the call of duty to investigate the earth continuity of the house wiring and I can see no way that an appliance repairer can be held responsible for defects in the house wiring. The tests on the appliance itself should be adequate to ensure the metal parts of the appliance do not become live.
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
A simple plug in Martindale will check polarity and earth, and takes seconds to do, only good for the ring main though, so no good for Double ovens!
KevinRe: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
I use a Martindale Polarity Tester which gives the engineer or repairman information from the off. You can also check that you have a good earth by checking continuity from the earth on the appliance under test to nearby plumbing, I’ve had a couple fo situations where plastic piping has been installed which caused loss of earth to the Kitchen area and that test established that ,as did the day I found that the polarity was wrong due to a nail being knocked through a wall into the power supplyin another oart of the house. At the time the customer was having remedial electrical work being carried out and there was a spark on site working. When I told him of my findings he did not at first believe it. But when he actually checked he confimed my findings, that one always worried me as he was going to leave that particular installation like that !
I can understand the comments on how far do you go, its not our fault that there could be dodgy wiring in a customers house, but we should at least be aware of what we are working on and for me its a matter of course that I test.
Its interesting to see how each of us works along with our theories, it make the world go round
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
Perhaps those of you who are worried and wouldn’t be able to sleep at night would be best offering your customers the option of an electrical safety check on their installation as an add-on extra to the labour charge.
Your invoice would show whether or not the option had been taken and if fire or shock resulted subsequently the customers who had not opted for the check would have no cause to blame you. (Neither would those who had opted for the check as it was only valid at the time of testing!)
I’m sure there’s scope in there for a few extra pounds to be added to 50{e5d1b7155a01ef1f3b9c9968eaba33524ee81600d00d4be2b4d93ac2e58cec2d} of all calls and some minds to be able to rest.
For myself I think I’ll carry on pretty much as I always have done doing what checks I think are necessary according to the age and appearance of the installation (rcd/fusebox?) and the vulnerability (small children/elderly?) of the customers.
Mike.Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
kheath wrote: so no good for Double ovens!
KevinAs I said in the Zanussi burning smell thread, this is an interesting topic.
I too like your good selves spend 5 days a week in the field mixing with those interesting people we call customers 👿 as we all know, great job if it wasnt for the customers, but no customers no job 😥 .
As well as repairing appliances I also install new electric cookers as part of our service, (dumping the old unit and fitting the new) and am sure many of you do the same
Before connection I always check supply polarity and earth loop impedance and this I do without fail. It worries me to think how many I have come accross that actually have no earth for one reason or another 😯 .
This I think youll find is a legal requirement and that the results are documented.
I also know that Hotpoint installation drivers have been issued a tester to check mains socket upon prior to an installation of their products.
Coming back to the repair side of things, carrying out a PAT test to a freestanding item after repair is quite straightforward, however built in appliances not so easy ❗
Without actually pulling it all out which we all know is a pain unless of course its a Neff or similar with those b****y studs on and you have no choice.
You should have turned it off at the supply socket on a double pole switch. :zap: This would only leave the earth connected, as you now have the unit out anyway a PAT can be done.
Pretty straight forward stuff really 😉I have often pondered the 💡 that if you were doing an element change from the front, before fitting fixing the element in place you could actually connect Pat tester croc clips to earth and terminals of element ❓ ,
switch on all oven/grill functions etc and check unit for low insulation ❓Depending on timer/clock being two pole relay etc
The only Negative to this though is that when re fixing the new element into place you could actually catch the wires between the chassis and element, this of course then makes the whole test void as this is what you checking for in the first place. :lol:, but is something better than nothing ❓ Just a thought
Steve
Re: Electrical Safety & Legal Legislation
leavemetogetonwithit wrote:Perhaps those of you who are worried and wouldn’t be able to sleep at night would be best offering your customers the option of an electrical safety check on their installation.
Mike.Can of worms springs to mind ❗
I find that domestic house wiring like many other subjects is the that the more you get into it you realise how little you actually know about. Stick to what you know best, appliances 😉
Steve
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