Advice needed re: ancient fuse box in rental property

olly300

Playhouse wrote: »

ah no Im under no illusions re the wiring. The ancient fuse box, original meter and old sockets indicate that the house has not been re wired and will have the original wiring

That's actually just a dangerous or even more so than the old fuse box.

As a child one of my parents houses had the round plugs in part of it. I remember being there when my mum was told that she was lucky she hadn't had an electrical fire due to the disintegration of the wires, and that was in the late 80s.

Depending when the house was built it could have been wired when there were no universal standards for electricity.

olly300

Playhouse wrote: »

I would add that LL has had a brand new gas boiler installed so obviously there will be a gas certificate for that, but I will be asking for it

The boiler should be inspected every year.

All you actually want is to see the certificate, check the date and get the number of the gas technician on the certificate to check they are actually on the Gas Safe register.

Playhouse

olly300 wrote: »

The boiler should be inspected every year.

All you actually want is to see the certificate, check the date and get the number of the gas technician on the certificate to check they are actually on the Gas Safe register.

Cheers-current tenants of a private rent with a gas boiler so aware of that:T

not afraid to admit that fifty year old wiring frightens me slightly but I guess that lots of old houses have not been updated in that sense. AFAIK the LL is having the electrician remove the old plugs

jgh

Playhouse wrote: »

ah no Im under no illusions re the wiring. The ancient fuse box, original meter and old sockets indicate that the house has not been re wired and will have the original wiring

Are you *sure* it's an "ancient, bakelite" fuse board? You said the house is 40 years old, so it will be a 1970s ABS plastic fuseboard, not a bakelite fuseboard, and certainly not ancient.

There is no way it will have the original meter, as they are required by the electricity supply regulations to be replaced every 10-to-15 years.

Whether your consumer unit is suitable for the supplied load depends entirely and utterly on the supplied load. Do you have lots of plug-in electric heating? Household electric loads are a lot lower than they were in the past when people tended to use electric fires. I've just put a clamp-meter on my supply and I'm drawing 2.5A with one light, two computers, freezer, fridge and one television turned on. Turning the cooker on adds 16A. All four rings plus oven draws 39A. I don't have an electric shower, but if I ran all four rings, the oven, the washing machine, *AND* decided to have an electric shower at the same time, is still less than the 100A supply can deliver.

As pointed out, a *new* installation in a "wet" area needs to comply with Part P and be signed off by a Part P registered person. A *new* shower installation requires an RCD, *replacing* an *existing* shower does not.

Any competant person doing a full house electrical refurbishment will do a full installation test. The owner (your landlord) would be foolish to not require a copy of the test schedule from the electrician. Even if it is charged for, so what?, it's tax-deducatable running costs.

Landlord & Tenancy law requires that the landlord keeps the electrics in a fit and safe condition. I would consider it a sensible part of the landlord's duty of care to give the tenant a copy of the Installation Completion Certificate.

I'm a C&G236 qualified electrician with 20 years experience.

m0bov

what he said. rcd and mcb are two differant things.

martindow

Playhouse wrote: »

ah no Im under no illusions re the wiring. The ancient fuse box, original meter and old sockets indicate that the house has not been re wired and will have the original wiring

From your posts it does sound as though it has been rewired at some point as the house has redundant round pin sockets and newer square pin sockets now being used.

Playhouse

Thanks all, I can confirm its definitely the original meter, its black with numbers which roll up and a little black thing that spins round. They replaced the ,meters round here a couple of years ago but possibly because there were tenants in there the tenants ignored the letter and werent in. I would phone the Electricity board up and ask them to take it out when I moved in.
Ive checked the land registry for the house, it was built in 1964 and the fuse box appears to be a black/brown coloured box, with five black fuse blocks in it

Playhouse

jgh- ah the shower is replacing an existing electric shower, so I guess that would mean there is no requirement to install a seperate RCD for it?
Ive no idea if a full electrical test will be done but at the very least I assume that the new electrics being installed will be tested. LL was very clear on the fact that the new electric work needed to be signed off.

m0bov

the shower must be rcd protected with a pull cord to isolate. its ur life ur risk.

DVardysShadow

m0bov wrote: »

the shower must be rcd protected

This does not apply to a replacement shower.

In any case the primary means of achieving electrical safety is adequate bonding.