New Electrical CoC. What if you don't have the original CoC?

General Discussions
21

On that. If the law changes, how are we, the owners, supposed to keep abreast if sparkies cannot even, I wonder.

Solar CoC, if you had “pals” in Cpt, you would have had the “lowdown” of the National Regs on that. :grinning:

First time I saw the actual printed regulations was in 2019. The electrician just went on a course and got the latest regulations book, so he hauled it out to show me. I was his first solar install, we took it on together. Him being an Installation Electrician.

Funny thing I noticed:
At the time, in his latest regulations book, there was no CoCT logo anywhere near that book. :slight_smile:

Took photos of the pages.
They have subsequently been updated.

So yeah, this Solar CoC and all that goes on around it, has been out in SA for a while. Helps if the sparkie has the latest book, and goes on the course where they explain the updates / changes in the new releases.

22

A part of me wants to say that applying regulations retrospectively is unfair and just wrong.

I know a person now in England who when he lived in SA had a very old car that he loved dearly. He took that car with him when he emigrated, and he gets his RWC when it’s due, but the test is conducted according to the regulations that were in force when the car was new. So he doesn’t have to fit seat belts or any of this new fangled stuff to drive that car on the road.

OTOH I like to ride on heritage railways when I’m in the UK, and they are always speed restricted because they don’t have modern safety features and generally the curators go for authenticity at the cost of not being able to run the engines flat out.

I’m not sure why an RWC doesn’t have the safety implications that the certification for passenger trains doesn’t. Unless they think that vintage car owners are an important voting bloc.

But to answer the question

Shouldn’t this be incumbent on the electrician? After all, we hire him because he has skills and knowledge that we don’t.

Medical doctors don’t just stay doctors forever. They have to re-register at regular intervals, and the test involves them showing familiarity with recent trends, which treatments give best outcomes etc.

I used to work for Netcare. They have a lot of doctors working there. Those doctors don’t have a practice, but they all maintained their registration. I suppose that knowing about the latest developments is just good business sense, but if they don’t keep up then their registration lapses and they are not “doctor” anymore.

Engineers are required to keep themselves up to date in their field of expertise.

23

Yes. Very few do.

If a sparkie annoys me with his answers, read, he is talking cr…p, I learnt a trick that tends to change the conversation.

Like just days ago:
Law says 2.5mm2 wire for plugs.
Max of 20a breaker on 2.5mm2 wire.

Breaker being in a Critical Loads DB, me wanting to stop user dead in their tracks, there is a 10A breaker on that 2.5mm2 wire.

The one sparkie, who gives CoC’s, says it is illegal.
Why?
Law says it must be 20a breaker for plugs. They put up to 7 plugs per 20a breaker, he said.
Why 20a and not 10a I asked again.
Because the breaker must go before the plug. Then he said the breaker won’t trip. Then he said something like the plug will burn.
Dead serious.

I said, but it is to limit the solar system draw, so the breaker trips when users abuse that circuit with like 2 x heaters.

What size inverter, he asked. 5kVa I said.
Then he said, get a bigger inverter … that’s when he knew he fu…d up …

Asked him for his book where it says it must be only a 20a on a 2.5mm2 wire, never smaller, the trick I learnt.
… and I check the date op release of the book if sparkie can produces it. :wink:

24

I think that for at least some things – not sure which ones – if it was compliant when installed, and was not modified since, it remains compliant. When you sell the house, many sparkies smell money and see that as a time to redo the entire DB… while others are happy to sign off the old unmodified fuse board in your broom closet at the foot of table mountain. True story.

Is it better to redo the DB? Of course it is… but who’s going to pay for it? :slight_smile:

Now you have to ask yourself, with the propensity to let out smoke… do you really want to do this? :slight_smile:

You get plugin testers that can test sockets and sometimes even the RCD. About R400. Get one.

The sparky himself quite often simply clamps a long earth wire to the earth point in the DB, and then goes around the house with a multimeter on the ohm range checking for earths on all the metal parts. That is also fairly easy to do, and should keep the smoke within everything.

For myself, a good friend also gave me an old insulation tester. Really useful, but this is where it gets interesting. Don’t do insulation tests between live and neutral with appliances plugged in… :slight_smile:

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25

Yes … but with the T&C’s carefully screened. :slight_smile:
DB’s … no!

I quote what I got this morning.

When you take ownership of a house:

Beetle, not sure it has any bearing today for me.
Plumbing, no water leaks so not sure if it has any bearing.

Electrical, the part very few if any, knew about till this thread.

26

So after two years, you either need to bring a sparky in and “update” it again (I know a local sparky who provided such a service), or… you’ll have to do a full inspection later. Usually when you sell, and then suddenly everything is wrong :slight_smile:

My current house had a 12k bill for fixing the electrical (paid by the previous owner). When we moved in, the main switch in the DB didn’t have overcurrent protection (two green levers), I had a live cable hanging out of the wall, just loosely insulated, one of the plugs in the upstairs bedroom still has no proper overcurrent protection (wired directly off a 40A breaker), I have to fix it some time…

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27

Not the same, but similar.

Because we are waiting on cupboards, 2 light switches and 4 plugs are just hanging from the roof.
Safe, insulated and properly connected. Can be used.

But it is frowned upon.

Someone can trip and fall and pull the plugs loose …

Your fix / solution: (if it is still like that)
Put cable in trunking.
Add a plug, fastened to the wall.
Then that wire is legal - assuming it is properly connected to the DB. :slight_smile:

28

Of course it isn’t still like that! I also initially thought I’d just put a plug on that, because I figured this was probably the previous owner’s way of powering his bar fridge, which used to be in this general location.

Then I discovered that putting a load on it doesn’t really work, and then upon further inspection I found that it is wired across the light switch on the other side of the wall.

This was someone’s way of adding a second light switch to a more convenient location.

The other side was worse. Someone stripped back the wires going into the wall switch, and just twisted these wires around it. Did I mention this is inside a drywall?

I used some heat shrink to repair the damaged wiring, ripped out the cable hanging from the wall, and made it all nice and proper.

My point is… as 12k bill to make the house wiring right missed THREE major and extremely obvious mistakes. That’s how CoCs are done for house sales…

Suffice it to say that a certain company in this area who supposedly can be called any hour of the day, and any day of the week, going by their name, will never ever get my support.

29

Geez … I have no words for that sheer incompetence from that CoC guy.

And that is, releasing no smoke, why I decided that this is our house, our 3yo grandchild everywhere, so better the right sparky is next to me.

Cause let me state this.
If the sparkies to date, and they have ensured our protection (and protected me against myself), so I will never “throw them under the bus” (yes, I lost my cool recently with expensive incompetent contractors), but rather remove their “Public and Legal liability risks” going forward, by getting a new CoC on the entire house.

Context:
Main house, 2 bedrooms, 2 bath, large area.
Flat, 2 bedrooms 2 bath, 1/3 less than main house.
Back rental area, 3 bedrooms, 2 bath, half of main house.
Front Rental, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1/4 of main house.
Triple Garage.
3 electric geysers.
One new (not my problem to heat) Gas geyser for flat hot water.

So it is spread wide, the “risks”, (with unique TTT’s creative legal moves) ito plugs and lights. Big job to test, many “big opportunity” for “o, this is wrong, will cost so much”.

… and a 5kva covers it all quite nicely. :slight_smile:

I will lose my chips if I had your experience with the likes of the CoC you got.