Poll for university. All help is much appreciated!!

[Stephen_a]

Hi all,

I am currently studying electrical engineering at university and as part of my course I have chosen to conduct a poll on electrical wiring.

I am writing a report that will outline the average time it will take for a trained electrician to complete certain jobs, an apprentice electrician and a person without any electrical experience.

I will strongly appreciate any help and the more responses I can achieve the better. This will allow me to compare the results and will therefore be able to produce a more detailed and accurate report. Thank you in advance!

The questions I am asking are as follows:

1.       How much time does it take to wire an electrical switch?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

2.       How much time does it take to wire an electrical socket?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

3.       How much time does it take to wire lamp pendant?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

4.       Does wiring become a tough task when doing quite a lot in a single day?

5.        What are the most common tasks when wiring a house compared to a commercial building?

 

[Andy™]

far too many variables to get any useful info from that

1: 1g1w switch? 1g2w switch? 2g2w? 3g2w? 4g2w? replacement or new, loop through switch or switch live only?

2: 13a single socket? 13a double socket? 16a SP socket? 125a TP socket?

3: low enough to reach from workstand? ladders? scaffold?

4: depends

5: too many to list

 

[Stephen_a]

far too many variables to get any useful info from that

1: 1g1w switch? 1g2w switch? 2g2w? 3g2w? 4g2w? replacement or new, loop through switch or switch live only?

2: 13a single socket? 13a double socket? 16a SP socket? 125a TP socket?

3: low enough to reach from workstand? ladders? scaffold?

4: depends

5: too many to list

Thank you for your reply. As i am not an electrician I didn't realise how broad my questions were.

I am going to create a report showing the averages so I will just use one of each.

1.       How much time does it take to wire a single gang single way switch?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

2.       How much time does it take to wire a 13A Double socket?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

3.       How much time does it take to wire lamp pendant that requires ladders?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

4.       Does wiring become a tough task when doing quite a lot in a single day? If you were doing the re wire of a house and had to wire 15 sockets in one day would this be quite time consuming and laborious or would it not be a problem that you had to wire that many. (i.e. would there be a point in which you think that you have to stop for the day because it is taking too much time/becoming too much strain on your body?

5.        What are the most common tasks when wiring a house compared to a commercial building? Are there many 13A double sockets in commercial buildings? If not, what is used mainly?

Thank you in advance. I hope this is detailed enough.

 

[Davethsparky]

How do you define wiring something? Is it terminating cables which have been already installed or is it running the cables and terminating them, or just running the cables? Do you include chasing and other preparatory work? What is the type of construction of the building? What type of cable and what installation method? Does the time need to include testing and paperwork? 

Is the house occupied or unoccupied? Do I need to restore power every night or can I leave it isolated? Is it being done in a single fix or is it two fixes? Are there other trades in the way or is it just the electrician and his apprentice? 

The point at which I stop for a day will depend on how I'm being paid, for day-rate work generally it will be working to the clock (8 - 10 hour day) whereas on a price it will doing as much as possible in a day.

 

[kerching]

Seriously i do not think you are going tomget ANY meaningful data from these questions...they need to be a LOT more detailed

are they already cabled

have cables been tested

metal,surface box

plastic surface box

flush box

making good required

conduit

trunking

Pyro

SWA

connection only or cable and connect

a lot of these have been mentioned before

 

[septiclecky]

Question 3 - Answer could be how long does it take an electrician to wire up a pendent light after a person with no experience and does not know what their doing has made an abortion of it.

 

[bluetobits]

Question 3 - Answer could be how long does it take an electrician to wire up a pendent light after a person with no experience and does not know what their doing has made an abortion of it.

Got a job to go to in the next few days consisting of staircases and landings with one way, two way and intermediate switching that some monkey has fitted newlec two wire occupancy switches on all of them and apparently only one of them actually works. Might take me all day. 

 

[Stephen_a]

How do you define wiring something? Is it terminating cables which have been already installed or is it running the cables and terminating them, or just running the cables? Do you include chasing and other preparatory work? What is the type of construction of the building? What type of cable and what installation method? Does the time need to include testing and paperwork?

Is the house occupied or unoccupied? Do I need to restore power every night or can I leave it isolated? Is it being done in a single fix or is it two fixes? Are there other trades in the way or is it just the electrician and his apprentice?

The point at which I stop for a day will depend on how I'm being paid, for day-rate work generally it will be working to the clock (8 - 10 hour day) whereas on a price it will doing as much as possible in a day.

Thank you for your replies, I will try and make this as detailed as possible. Please let me know if I need to expand on any questions.

For the following questions I am going to assume the following:

• The cables have already been installed and only termination of the cables in the accessories is necessary.
  
• The building will be a standard house with brick/plasterboard/plaster.
  
• I assume the cable size would be 2.5mm flat twin & earth?
  
• I don't need to take into account testing and paperwork.
  
• The house can be classed as unoccupied so the power can be left isolated and it is just the electrician and his apprentice.
  
• Assume the work will be done on price.
  

What are the least time consuming and most time consuming elements when terminating cables for the following situations?

1.       How much time does it take to wire a single gang single way switch?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

2.       How much time does it take to wire a 13A Double socket? (Just a bit of extra knowledge for myself. How many cables is there ever likely to be terminated into a socket? I have been told that usually the maximum amount of 'Live cables' & 'Neutral cables' terminated into a socket would be 2 x 2.5mm of each. Is this because of the way the wiring works or just out of ease for the installation as it would be harder to terminate 3 'Live cables' and 3 'Neutral cables' into the same socket? Also is 3 the maximum amount of 'Earth cables' that could be terminated into a socket (I assume one for that socket, one for the next socket and one for the back box)? Could this be more in certain circumstances?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

3.       How much time does it take to wire lamp pendant that requires ladders?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

4.       Does wiring become a tough task when doing quite a lot in a single day? If you were changing all the sockets in a house and had to wire 30 sockets in one day would this be quite time consuming and laborious or would it not be a problem that you had to wire that many. (i.e. would there be a point in which you think that you have to stop for the day because it is taking too much time/becoming too much strain on your body?

5.        What are the most common accessories in a house?

Thank you in advance!!!

 

[Manator]

You are not going to get any useful data from this type of poll. At the moment another group of students have asked for our help with a poll they are doing.

I strongly recommend that you view the way they have done this and adapt your poll accordingly. For instance if you wish to know how long it would take to wire a plug top up you could give multiple time scales as your preferred answers.Ie

A. Under two minutes

B. over two minites but less than three.

C. four minutes or over.

The results would then give you data that you can calculate to give an average time over the three times you have given. If you need far more detail for calculation then you simply make the time scales more critical ie 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on.

 

[Sidewinder]


Plus in your "average" house you wouldn't be wiring lighting in 2.5 FTE! ...


 


Stephen_a, if you are looking to see if it's worth going down the pre-made plug in route, then it's already available, and it is a right royal pain in the posterior unless you have a very special install.

 

[Davethsparky]

Thank you for your replies, I will try and make this as detailed as possible. Please let me know if I need to expand on any questions.

For the following questions I am going to assume the following:

• The cables have already been installed and only termination of the cables in the accessories is necessary.
  
• The building will be a standard house with brick/plasterboard/plaster.
  
• I assume the cable size would be 2.5mm flat twin & earth?
  
• I don't need to take into account testing and paperwork.
  
• The house can be classed as unoccupied so the power can be left isolated and it is just the electrician and his apprentice.
  
• Assume the work will be done on price.
  

What are the least time consuming and most time consuming elements when terminating cables for the following situations?

1.       How much time does it take to wire a single gang single way switch?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

2.       How much time does it take to wire a 13A Double socket? (Just a bit of extra knowledge for myself. How many cables is there ever likely to be terminated into a socket? I have been told that usually the maximum amount of 'Live cables' & 'Neutral cables' terminated into a socket would be 2 x 2.5mm of each. Is this because of the way the wiring works or just out of ease for the installation as it would be harder to terminate 3 'Live cables' and 3 'Neutral cables' into the same socket? Also is 3 the maximum amount of 'Earth cables' that could be terminated into a socket (I assume one for that socket, one for the next socket and one for the back box)? Could this be more in certain circumstances?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

3.       How much time does it take to wire lamp pendant that requires ladders?

Trained electrician                           Apprentice electrician                    Person with no experience

4.       Does wiring become a tough task when doing quite a lot in a single day? If you were changing all the sockets in a house and had to wire 30 sockets in one day would this be quite time consuming and laborious or would it not be a problem that you had to wire that many. (i.e. would there be a point in which you think that you have to stop for the day because it is taking too much time/becoming too much strain on your body?

5.        What are the most common accessories in a house?

Thank you in advance!!!

If it is just second fix then the answer is going to be a few minutes for each, the switch socket and pendant are likely to take roughly the same amount of time. For an apprentice it can be expected to take longer, but they'll get quicker as they go along.

for a person with no experience it could take them all day or it could take them a couple of minutes, impossible to say. 

For q4 if it is just second fix then it is a pretty easy job really compared to the hard work of first fix with preparing the routes, chasing and running cables. Being on a price I would quite happily work 12/14 hours in a day and take the next day off. 

The most common accessory is probably twin sockets for the average house. 

Whats this his all about anyway?