Regulations
‘Part P’ – what is it and why is it important?
Part P refers to the section of the building regulations concerned with the design and installation of electrical installations. Since January 2005, it has been a requirement for anyone carrying out electrical work in homes and gardens in England and Wales to follow rules defined in Part P of the building regulations. These regulations protect you from unsafe electrical wiring. They require certain electrical jobs to be notified to your local authority building control [LABC] unit before work commences. LABC then inspect the finished installation to ensure it complies with building regulation. There is a fee payable to LABC for this notification/inspection process. However, if you use a Part P approved electrician there is no fee payable. Moreover, they will ensure all work complies to building regulations and handle all notification paperwork. The approved electrician will issue the customer directly with an electrical installation certificate, and his governing body [in our case ELECSA] will notify LABC and send the customer a building regulations compliance notice, usually within 30 days of the work being completed.
This paper trail ensures that the work was carried out by a Part P certified electrician, and that the work itself complies with the current building regulations. The documents are important. If you want to insure, or even sell, your home they provide proof that your electrical installation is safe and complies with buildings regulations. If the work is non-notifiable, on completion the electrician should still present the person ordering the work with a minor works installation certificate.
Notifiable work, or non-notifiable work?
Certain electrical jobs in the home are ‘notifiable’, which means that the work needs to be checked by the Local Authority Building Control [LABC] Department (giving two days’ notice before starting work) unless carried out by an electrician registered with an authorised Part P self-certification scheme.
In general terms, notifiable work includes installing new circuits back to the consumer unit – for example, a new ring, lighting or cooker circuit – and extending or altering existing circuits in a kitchen, bathroom or outdoors. Extensions to existing circuits that are NOT in kitchens, bathrooms or outdoors are NOT notifiable. Repair, maintenance and like-for-like replacement jobs (other than of consumer units) anywhere in the house are also NOT notifiable.
BS 7671 and ‘17th Edition’.
Terms which you may hear a lot when dealing with electricians or builders is ‘BS 7671′ or ’17th Edition’. BS [British Standard] 7671 refers to the regulations/requirements concerning electrical installations in the U.K., which all electrical work, i.e. the wiring in your house or business premise, must adhere to when installed. ’17th Edition’ is just the latest [2008] edition of these regulations. One important thing to remember and to have in your mind when dealing with an electrician is that the BS7671 regulations are not retrospective, i.e. if your home was re-wired in 2005 in compliance with the 16th Edition, there is no obligation for you to have further improvements so that your home meets 17th edition regulations. However, all new electrical work does have to be done to the latest [17th] edition.
Is it dangerous or not?
A good electrician should explain to you in layman’s terms what parts of the wiring in your house simply don’t meet today’s regulations but at the same time do not pose a threat of electric shock or fire and which parts of the wiring or installation does not comply with today’s regulations and at the same time carry a greater risk of causing electric shock (or failure to protect you from electric shock) or fire hazard.
Earthing and Bonding
Earthing and Bonding are two of most important factors in determining the safety of the electrical installation in your home.
Earthing:
Earthing commonly refers to the ‘circuit protective conductors (CPC)’ or you may know them as the green and yellow wires that run inside electrical cables alongside the Live and Neutral Conductors. The earth wire should run continuously from a socket outlet light or other electrical outlet to your consumer unit. Without the earth wire the fuses or MCBs in your consumer unit will fail to work correctly, i.e. failing to switch off (‘trip’) when there is a fault. This is why it is important that when work is being carried out on a circuit by an electrician, that they check the integrity and continuity of the earth (CPC) for that circuit, and that any corrective measures are taken if necessary.
Bonding:
There are two types of bonding; i) Main Bonding and ii) Supplementary Bonding.
Main Bonding
Main Bonding is the use of a separate thick (10mm csa) green and yellow copper cable, to connect the Water, Gas and Oil services to the Earth Terminal in or adjacent to your consumer unit. Connections are made on the metal pipes near the point at which they enter your home, i.e. The Main Bonding for the water is normally connected within 1 meter of your Water Stop Tap.
Main Bonding is there to protect you. A fault current will always try to find a path down to earth, literally to the ground. The current will always take the easiest path to ground.
Rogue currents can exist in metal pipework and other areas of conductivity which remain dormant until touched by a person, who then unwittingly acts as the conductor to earth. By effectively creating a circuit, the dormant then current passes through the human body and thus becomes hazardous.
The purpose of Main Bonding (and Supplementary Bonding) is to create a permanent path for any rogue current to flow to earth. By this means, conductive surfaces like metal pipes and kitchen sinks cannot become dormant conductors of stray currents that are waiting to reach earth through the human body.
As long as the water pipe, gas pipe or oil pipe coming into your property are metallic, Main Bonding is compulsory in all circumstances, even when the rest of the pipes in your house are plastic.
Supplementary Bonding
Supplementary Bonding is the use of a smaller, thinner (4mm) green and yellow copper cable to connect together all metal surfaces in a particular area. This area is typically the bathroom, or any other room containing a bath or shower. The 17th Edition Regulations is a little less demanding than the 16th Edition when it comes to Supplementary Bonding. There may be cases when no supplementary bonding is required in the bathroom, i.e. all the pipes are plastic. There could be other circumstances also when no supplementary bonding is required but since the regulations and calculations involved would be impossible to translate into layman’s terms, only an electrician could really come to that judgement.
Other areas where you may find or need Supplementary Bonding.
Area around Central Heating Boiler, Combi Boiler, and Immersion Heaters, where all the metallic pipes should be connected together with a green and yellow cable. Supplementary bonding can be installed in the kitchen, i.e. connecting kitchen sink with the hot and cold water pipes, a lot less frequently these days due to the relaxation in the 17th Edition with regards to Supplementary Bonding. That said, it’s better to be safer than sorry.
Inspection and Testing
There are various types of electrical certificates that are issued. All certificates are only issued when work has been satisfactorily completed, inspected and tested. The main types of certificates are.
Electrical Installation Certificate: A certificate issued when one or more circuits have been newly installed in commercial or industrial settings, i.e. offices, retail, factory.
Domestic Installation Certificate: A certificate issued when one or more circuits have been newly installed in a domestic setting.
Periodic Inspection Report: A comprehensive certificate issued after the inspection and testing of an existing installation. The Periodic Inspection Report (PIR) should be carried out at regular intervals to determine the state and safety of the wiring in your home, i.e. it is recommended that you have an electrician carry out a PIR for your home at least every 10 years. As from 2011, Periodic Inspection Reports (PIR) have been renamed ‘Electrical Condition Reports’. This is being done in a much needed attempt to create reports that are easy to read and understand by people with no electrical experience or knowledge. Periodic Inspection Reports contain readings and other findings, and usually include recommendations from the inspector in respect of work needed to be done to rectify problems.
Visual Condition Report / Electrical Safety Check: The purpose of a Visual Condition Report is to determine as far as is reasonably practicable, whether the installation has any visually- evident defects or has suffered any damage or deterioration which may affect safety. A Visual Inspection Report will not determine whether the electrical installation is safe or not. It is not appropriate to report that an installation is in a satisfactory condition on the basis of visual inspection only.
Portable Appliance Test (PAT test): A basic test that is carried out to determine the safety of the electrical appliances that are used in commercial and public settings, i.e. workplace, shops, bars, libraries, rented homes etc. Basically anything with a plug top on needs to be tested. The frequency that the test should take place depends on various factors. It is quite a routine test to carry out, although a certain amount of logistics is required on large scale jobs in order to keeps the labour cost down and to keep down-time to a minimum.