Got to love tenants.

[boltonsparky]

Extractor fans turned off (that's the oldest one in the book).

Family home.

Smoke alarms removed from their bases and nowhere to be seen, leaving the property without smoke detection, the landlord had the radio base interlinked smokes fitted before tenant moved in, the following makes this more of a concern...

Trailing socket cable run from a no access socket behind a very heavy falling apart wardrobe, the wardrobe was sat on the cable crushing it, that same trailing flex led into a 4 way run into the bed, including charger plugged in under the sheets headbang  along with another trailing socket running across the room plugged into that with multiple plugs to TVs DVDs sound systems etc. A slight reshuffle of furniture would have made the existing sockets in the room more than adequate.

All the usual rubbish piled up everywhere making it very difficult to get to anything despite the landlord pre-warning them to move anything in the way.

Common sense lacking somewhat. 

 

[Evans Electric]

I presume this was an EICR   Fred .?  :innocent

 

[boltonsparky]

I presume this was an EICR   Fred .?  :innocent

Yeah. Whilst some of it is outside the scope of an EICR it's interesting some of the stuff you find. And of course the obligatory dumped mattress in the front garden and three piece imitation leather suite in the back garden.  

Well within the scope of the EICR was the bonding clamp fitted to the painted copper pipe, giving it nearly 40 ohms. Knowing the spark who did the original bonding and his high standards and judging by the extra length coiled up on the cable it was done by the meter maid that had fitted a water meter, terminals on the clamp loose too. Cleaned up and a nice reading of 0.02 ohms. They must have heard of that metallic paint on them fancy new motor vehicles, assumed it was conductive and mistaken it for emulsion  :C

 

[Evans Electric]

And of course the obligatory dumped mattress in the front garden and three piece imitation leather suite in the back garden.  

What ,  no giant freezer dumped out there . 

Yes you don't know what you're going to find on an EICR  .     My cousin owned a rental  villa style house ,  one flat up  one flat down .     Upstairs tenants were two girls , immaculately   clean , they'd decorated , some new bits of furniture ,   no problems . 

Downstairs was a bloke , late 20s  ,  seemed to be a collector ......mainly of old pizza cartons , MaccyDee  cartons complete with remains , unwashed socks  & underpants     and an ambiance background  smell  of weed ,   rotten food , trainers , body odour  & pee  .      Theres lovely . 

 

[ProDave]

For me in a rental property the first thing I do / advise the landlord to have done, is remove fan isolator switches.  I still personally doubt the necessity of them, but you do NOT want to give the tenant the means to disable them (then of course they will complain of damp and mould)

If the smokes are missing tell the tenants they must replace them at their expense.

 

[Murdoch]

For me in a rental property the first thing I do / advise the landlord to have done, is remove fan isolator switches.  I still personally doubt the necessity of them, but you do NOT want to give the tenant the means to disable them (then of course they will complain of damp and mould)

If the smokes are missing tell the tenants they must replace them at their expense.

and if they are on their own circuit I recommend they get put on a lighting circuit too

 

[Evans Electric]

I think....based on what I've seen ......  that  landlords should stipulate no interference with electric wiring or gas .     

 

[Murdoch]

I think....based on what I've seen ......  that  landlords should stipulate no interference with electric wiring or gas .     

like thats going to work - NOT

 

[Phoenix]

and if they are on their own circuit I recommend they get put on a lighting circuit too

Still trying to understand the logic of this (below pic), they are on the lighting ciruit, just in the same breaker with a separate leg feeding the smokes, fair enough in a rental (In my own place I'd have put them on the spare way) but then if they have done that why....

 

[boltonsparky]

and if they are on their own circuit I recommend they get put on a lighting circuit too

I agree in rentals stick them on with the lighting. 

These ones are (or should say were) fed from the local lighting point, linked via radio bases.

 

[binky]

I'm not a fan of rental works. I did loads of that when I first started the business - it wears you down eventually! 

 

[Andy™]

people are stupid... sooner natural selection removes them the better... unfortunately, every time this happens means changes of requirements to make sure the next ***** cant do the same thing...

 

[Geoff1946]

sooner natural selection removes them the better..

Ah, someone else who thinks we shouldn't keep frustrating the working of Darwin's principle with excessive H&S.   I thought it was just me who thought that way.

 

[phil d]

Ahh tenant's a bloody nightmare! I had one who decided to fit some outside lights, there was about 10 of them along a wall about 30 feet long, each had a 60W lamp in, they were wired in all kinds, bits of 2.5, bits of 1.5, even bits of lawnmower flex, but his connection to the mains was the best. He'd opened up the fused spur feeding the boiler, it was on a surface box, pulled out one leg of the ring and sent that into another surface box alongside it, he'd not bothered to stick a link in to maintain the ring, 'it didn't two wires to feed a  boiler' he assured me!

Another one removed the smoke alarms because, 'they keep going off when we all pile in here and smoke weed' the tenant told me quite openly.

I had one tenant who kept turning off the fan in the bathroom as he 'didn't like the noise' ! he then moaned about damp in the windowless room, this was easily resolved by a little creative thinking. I removed the wires from the centre light and linked them out in the loft. I then broke into the shower cable and fitted a fused spur, out of this I fed not only the fan, but also the light, back then there was no requirement to fit a fan isolator so it was simple, when he turned off the spur to isolate the fan it also took out the light, that stopped him, he couldn't shower in the dark. lol  It amazes me at the lengths some tenants go to to bodge something, when you look at some of the stuff it would have been far cheaper and indeed easier to do the job properly.

Saying that they are not all bad, recently I was called out by a very attractive young lady in a council house on a local estate, could I change a light in her kitchen? I said I'd pop over in the morning, 'no problem, I'll see you then' she replied. Arriving in the kitchen I noticed two things, one the original light fitting had been taken down, and two with the apparent exception of the downstairs lights, everything else in the property was live and working.

She explained that she was a single parent and quite a competant DIY'er, she'd removed the old fitting and fitted the bracket for the new one but had been unable to get the 2 neutral cables into the rather small terminal block inside the new fitting( wired in typical council style it had the live looped at the switch so she had 1 switched live, 1 earth and 2 neutrals at the fitting)  I see and how have you isolated it? I asked, looking at the bare cables hanging from the ceiling, ' oh simple, I turned off the breaker marked downstairs lights' she replied. I felt guilty charging her seeing as how it only took me about 5 minutes to swap the fitting.