Bad electrician? Advice needed.

[Robert Quint]

Hi Everyone. 

A quick question. I am currently selling my house and I am just waiting on exchanging with a potential buyer who had all the surveys done etc. Right before we were going to exchange they decided they wanted the electrics tested which we agreed to at their expense. 

An electrician came in and spent the day testing all the electrics and fuse box/circuit board etc and rated them fair and satisfactory in the report. We have lived in the house for almost three years and have never had so much as a power cut or a tripped circuit or anything while here. A week after the electrician came all the power went to the plugs intermittently but not the lights at first. I went to the circuit board and could see nothing had tripped and it looked fine, what I could hear though coming from the RCD unit was an arcing / sparking noise and the smell of burning which gradually got worse. Fearing an electrical fire would start I switched off the main power switch and was left without heating and lights. Fortunately, after a Facebook plea, a nice man who worked as an electrician for a building company came round and made it safe, however, could not get a new RCD due to the time of night and would have to return the next day to restore the power which he did. He showed me the RCD unit which has been re-wired incorrectly and had melted one of the connections and left scorch marks. He said that a loose connection was found between buzz bar and RCD causing extensive heat damage to the breaker and that there was a good chance of an electrical fire had I not have shut off the electrics when I had. 

Obviously, no one has messed with the RCD since the electrician tested the unit, so it must have come from him, and even if he didn't cause it, he certainly didn't notice it during the safety tests.... he also broke one the light switches. 

Now this electrician has a pretty good score on check-a-trade and was genuinely a nice guy, but what do I do now? Contact him and tell him about it with a view to getting back my costs to fix it. Or just ignore it? Should I get a full electrical safety test done again? I really don't want the same guy coming round and have a quote for £110 for another check. 

Advice please 

Many thanks  

 

[ProDave]

A new RCD will be about £30 and take minutes to fit. Just get it done and move on.

It could in fact have been like that since the property was built.  Depending where the CU is located it can be very hard to see in the bottom, and a constant gripe of mine is the manufacturers still make rcd's and mcb's where it is even possible for the busbar to miss, when it is such a simple design change to eliminate that.

It would be unusual for the electrician doing the testing to have to remove the busbar, hence I think it may have been like that for a long time, and just the fact he has been in the CU disconnecting and re connecting other connections for the testing he has disturbed what has long been a poor connection.

 

[Evans Electric]

Hi  Robert ,

It sounds like the  electrician  left you with a loose connection  although I'm not sure why he would need to loosen the busbar connection  of an RCD  .   He would have disconnected  the outgoing cables for testing  but NOT the lower one  , unless it was already loose  and he unknowingly disturbed something  that was wedging it in place . 

Don't spend any more money ,  try to get him back , if he is a responsible guy  he should reimburse you .    It sounds like a genuine mistake ....may have forgotten to tighten up the terminal,  who knows .   

The Check -a  trade thing is basically meaningless in our trade  ,    does his report show  his membership on a trade body such as ,  NICEIC ...ELECSA...NAPPITT ...STROMA ...ECA  ? 

 

[Robert Quint]

Yes it has some for NICEIC.  When he was testing the circuit board I could hear him swearing because he couldn't get something back in place, I wasn't sure what it was but the lad who came out said the screw was in so tight on the bottom of the RCD he couldn't loosen it for a good while so god knows what happened. The electrician who fixed it though said it was going to have been caused by him and that he should have picked it up if it wasn't. I'm just more concerned about if it had caused a fire while I was asleep or at work or something. 

 

[ProDave]

What make of CU?

 

[Andy™]

tbh, unless you contacted the first electrician to come sort the problem first, then you have almost no chance of him paying your costs of another sparky

 

[Robert Quint]

MEMERA 3000 AD

tbh, unless you contacted the first electrician to come sort the problem first, then you have almost no chance of him paying your costs of another sparky

Unfortunately I hadn't organised them, and fearing a fire I called the first who responded to me... such is life

 

[Doc Hudson]

Welcome to the forum, I just want to clarify a few points before offering a few opinions.

.

Did you have a previous inspection report from almost three years ago when you first moved in?  (if yes it may well have still been valid 10 years)

Prior to the first electrician coming to do the inspection, have you been manually testing the RCD once a quarter, as should be stated on a sticker on or near the fuse box?  

When the faults started happening that you assume were caused by the first electrician did you try getting him back to look at the problem(s)?

Did this second electrician (who normally works for a building firm), re-test and issue a certificate for his replaced RCD?

As a general rule I doubt a week is long enough to get extensive heat damage to the RCD, more likely it has been progressively deteriorating for years, and if you haven't been disturbing the RCD, by failing to do the recommended quarterly manual tests, then it may be because the first electrician disturbed it, that has finally tipped it over the edge.  During an inspection you wouldn't normally be needing to dismantle the internal Bus-Bar connections on the fuse box. You would need to double check the extent and limitations box on the report. However, I would have expected the first electrician to have double checked the tightness of all terminations inside the box. As you have had a second person come and look at the work without offering the first electrician a reasonable chance to remedy any alleged errors then I am not sure how you stand legally with regard to seeking compensation from him.  (As a side note, most of these tradesman recommendation sites are basically just paid for advertising with customer references, that the traders have to pay to be a listed as a member on. As such they are not always a truly independent reference as the website needs the traders subscription fee to keep running).

Doc H.  

 

[Andy™]

Now this electrician has a pretty good score on check-a-trade

everyone does... try finding one with a bad score / reviews. you wont, because they remove them. they dont want people with a bad score / reviews on their site...

 

[Evans Electric]

out said the screw was in so tight on the bottom of the RCD he couldn't loosen it for a good while

Reading that , theres a chance that the thing had been overheating for a while  , possibly welding the screw in position  , perhaps he was trying to do you a favour by tightening it up but made it worse . 

I think perhaps you put it aside and move on , as said above .  

 

[Robert Quint]

A lot of the comments I've had here and other forums suggest it would have most likely been like this for a while. If he was checking the safety of the electrics then surely he should have picked up on this if it was? after all, it clearly wasn't safe a week later when it started arcing and overheating 

 

[Andy™]

he should have noticed it, but its possible that is was always loose and getting worse but not enough to cause a problem, he's then disturbed it so its now making a very bad contact instead of a slightly bad contact, its then got very bad very quick

its also just like a car MOT, it only states the car passed all tests that day, it doesnt mean the engine isnt going to fall out a week later

 

[Murdoch]

The poor quality of the products continue to be my biggest concern...... We now have poor quality parts encased in metal ..... Go figure.

 

[Doc Hudson]

A lot of the comments I've had here and other forums suggest it would have most likely been like this for a while. If he was checking the safety of the electrics then surely he should have picked up on this if it was? after all, it clearly wasn't safe a week later when it started arcing and overheating 

Possibly, but there again unless you have paid for several days worth of inspection and testing time then some items will have been omitted from the schedule. There is a book called guidance note 3 which gives instruction for undertaking an electrical inspection. It is an industry standard procedure where a sample of items are checked and tested to get an overall perception of what the condition of the installation is probably like. To comprehensively test everything would take at lot longer than a single day. So there is always an element of risk that and item could be overlooked.  As I said earlier on an inspection report there is a box to list the extent and limitation of the testing.

Everything that is wearing out has a final point of failure, where the day before it was still working ok. As Andy said you could MOT your car on Monday and by Friday the washer pump could have failed, a break light blown, the windscreen chipped in the line of sight and it would fail 5 days later. Whether or not you think he should have picked it up is irrelevant as you have chosen to get someone else in to amend the installation from that which was tested. so several aspects of the inspection report will be obsolete now anyway. (RCD trips times recorded can only apply to the RCD that is fitted, not an item that has been removed one week later.) As I asked earlier, did your second electrician give you an electrical certificate for his work?

Doc H. 

 

[ProDave]

The poor quality of the products continue to be my biggest concern...... We now have poor quality parts encased in metal ..... Go figure.

This annoys the hell out of me. It would be so simple to add a little tang of metal to stop the busbar entering the wrong side of the cage clamp, and 2 screws per terminal on a main switch and rcd would solve most issues. But no, rather than address the failings, we put the same carp in a tin box now.

 

[SLIPSHOD & SLAPDASH]

Putting aside all the  valid comments above , you have missed one point. That is since the 17th edition has been out one of the tick boxes on the report is check ALL terminations are tight in the board. This obviously was not done.

 

[ProDave]

Putting aside all the  valid comments above , you have missed one point. That is since the 17th edition has been out one of the tick boxes on the report is check ALL terminations are tight in the board. This obviously was not done.

Unless I missed it, there has not been any mention of a loose terminal, but there was one mentioned so tight they had a job undoing it. That's why I believe it was a case of the finger missed the cage clamp. I guess we will never know for certain.

 

[binky]

MK MCbs have a busbar shield, and I thik Hager might have these too.

as said above I doubt the inspecting electrican would have noticed if the clamp is on the busbar properly. It tends to be hard to spot without a small dental mirror. I think ProDave s scenario is correct, the connectionwas loose, and tightening the termnal screw actually made it worse

 

[ProDave]

I believe Hager have the shield on the outgoing terminal (where it is less important because you can just give the wire a tug to see if it is clamped) and not on the busbar side.