Electrical Regs Part P who is right?

HugoSP

HugoSP wrote: »

According to the regs a special location is a room that contains a bathroom or a shower. IIRC a location such as this demands a pull cord.

A downstairs loo contains neither - hence it is no more a special location in this respect than the kitchen that also has running water on tap!

Get the BCO to state the paragraph in the 16th edition (BS7671) that states that a pull cord is required in a downstairs loo - I bet he can't

Wow - not bad from memory

HugoSP

The OP is, or was nearly a victim of the way that Part P has been introduced into the building regs.

Some LAs employ Part P competent electricians to run this side of things, others who haven't got the budget do what they can to pursuade the public to get a Part P certified electrician in to save them the headache. Some have been known to invoice the applicant for the extra work, which is incidently against the law. The applicant should only have to pay the fee for building regs. That is to say that if you've paid £100 to serve a building notice for an extention, then the electrical inspection element is part of that.

It seems that the OP got the BCO who had, though no fault of his own been lumbered with the Part P job, or is one of a number of people who have been lumbered with it as part of the bigger scheme. He simply has not had sufficient training to make a basic mistake like that.

I would be interested to know whether the client is paying the standard BCO fee or has been charged for separate inspections.

pdrskint

Just to put my two peneth in ,, doesnt the 17th edition now allow sockets and switches in bathrooms, ???????????

ozskin

another penny and no earth bonding too, wait for the first deaths, and i am not joking. all in the spirit of european harmonisation. we had the safest electrical regs in europe so why cant they come up to our standard, i suppose it is the same as allowing even more chickens into a square mtr when most people would agree that numbers should be coming down

Inactive

moonrakerz wrote: »

Plenty of other countries don't have pull cords anywhere and you don't seem to find bathrooms full of electrocuted people !

Also why do you have to have a pull cord in the bathroom for the light, when the isolator for the fan can be a switch ? please don't say because the rules say so !

I agree, we in the UK seem to get buried under piles of red tape that serves no useful purpose, even the so called experts cannot agree on what is right and what is wrong.

BobProperty

ozskin wrote: »

another penny and no earth bonding too, wait for the first deaths, and i am not joking.....

It's allegedly no cross bonding provided there is an RCD. I have always been curious how cross bonding without an RCD has saved many lives (I can think of a possible answer but I'll wait).

Jonesya

BobProperty wrote: »

I have always been curious how cross bonding without an RCD has saved many lives (I can think of a possible answer but I'll wait).

I'm not an electrician but I thought that by cross bonding you ensured that all earthed metalwork within the location would be at the same potential, like inside a Faraday cage, so that in the event of an earth fault all of the metal work would rise by the same voltage above true earth; so if someone touched two separate pieces of earth metal work there could be no voltage difference across them and hence no current flow eg. no electric shock.

If they were not cross bonded then an earth fault on one appliance would result in a voltage being developed between the earth (and say its casing) of the faulting appliance and the other earthed items due to the volt drop across the faulting appliance's CPC from the current flowing to earth. Hence if you bridged the two there could be a voltage difference causing a current to flow/shock.

HugoSP

Jonesya wrote: »

I'm not an electrician but I thought that by cross bonding you ensured that all earthed metalwork within the location would be at the same potential, like inside a Faraday cage, so that in the event of an earth fault all of the metal work would rise by the same voltage above true earth; so if someone touched two separate pieces of earth metal work there could be no voltage difference across them and hence no current flow eg. no electric shock.

If they were not cross bonded then an earth fault on one appliance would result in a voltage being developed between the earth (and say its casing) of the faulting appliance and the other earthed items due to the volt drop across the faulting appliance's CPC from the current flowing to earth. Hence if you bridged the two there could be a voltage difference causing a current to flow/shock.

100% correct.

Althought I haven't managed to find a link to the draft regulations I understand that all circuits in bathrooms will now need to be supplied via an RCD, so I guess the arguement is that the RCD would trip in the event of a person touching two items at different potentials, before the individual suffered the consequences.

Does make a bit of a nonsense of EEBADS though?

PS, can anyone please tell me where we can download a consultation copy of the regs? Apparently we have until 28th feb 2008 to comment.

baldelectrician

the DPC (draft for public comment) was out LAST year -2007- you must have seen a typo.

The new regs book is out (ish).

Mine is at SELECT in Edinburgh, and will be posted out very soon.
I get it quicker, as they are 'in the loop' as it were.

BobProperty

Jonesya wrote: »

I'm not an electrician but I thought that by cross bonding you ensured that all earthed metalwork within the location would be at the same potential, like inside a Faraday cage, so that in the event of an earth fault all of the metal work would rise by the same voltage above true earth; so if someone touched two separate pieces of earth metal work there could be no voltage difference across them and hence no current flow eg. no electric shock.

In most cases though the bonding would also be earthed, and, IIRC wrongly, sometimes the cross bonding was actually deliberately taken back to earth. (It is called cross bonding not earthing for a reason) Therefore you a guaranteeing that the metalwork is earthed, so if you get a fault where something is at a voltage then contact with the metalwork would give a PD(is it?) and you get a current flow. Fine if you have an RCD, disaster if you have old fuses.

Jonesya wrote: »

If they were not cross bonded then an earth fault on one appliance would result in a voltage being developed between the earth (and say its casing) of the faulting appliance and the other earthed items due to the volt drop across the faulting appliance's CPC from the current flowing to earth. Hence if you bridged the two there could be a voltage difference causing a current to flow/shock.

But aren't you talking about earthing not cross bonding here?
By the way I'm only being Devil's Advocate here, I think having everything in a bathroom on an RCD is an improvement and it stops having to do useless things like having to cross bond mixer taps.