QuoteUK is already ridiculous enough. You want to make it worseso whats the real story behind that picture? yea at first glance it appears ridiculous,but try boarding a plane with any of those in your hand luggagePolice robbed a handyman walking down the street? It's had nothing to do with airport or sort of. Look at hashtag.
In the case of a circuit breaker, at least in the countries I lived they weren't available without the local agency approvals (which could bring some level of scrutiny). The case for caveat emptor is if the person actually equipped their entire house with breakers bought from an international marketplace, bypassing the local regulations. In this case, it is not "victim blaming" but idiocy and no amount of rules can prevent that.
Unfortunately that does not address the case where a person hires someone else to do the work, as there are too many curious people acting as handymen or general contractors. In this case, you would have to resort to recommendations from friends and neighbours.
A similar case can be made for the fuses, but it is obviously much harder to enforce (size, low cost, relative brands, etc). In an ideal world, the marketplace store should not have possession of a counterfeit fuse in the first place, but unfortunately that is not possible at all.
You're right, the actual situation is complicated. I.e. It is not Black and White, but some funny shade of grey. It also, varies widely, depending on what items you are talking about.
So, for me to say "Victim Blaming", earlier in the thread, is NOT that clear case.
An example, could be someone who is doing lots of DIY electronics repair/upgrading, to their home in the UK. They have counted that they need 5 mains sockets, 5 light switches, 5 circuit breakers, 5 reels of wire, 5 bulb holders, and 5 junction boxes (obviously I'm making this example up!).
So this member of the public, who wants to save lots of money (compared to paying for a proper electrician to do all the work), has the big shopping list of items, to buy.
They soon discover, it would cost (made up figures), hundreds of pounds to buy from their local DIY stores (but would have been safety approved types). So, they go to the local markets and perhaps ebay.
Because they discover they can get the entire list for a fraction of the cost.
I'm NOT 100% sure. But I suspect these hypothetical members of the public, DON'T necessarily (some might know), that those cheap markets and cheap sellers on ebay. Might be selling shoddy/unsafe, unapproved items.
So they may just end up buying them, without realising how potentially dangerous they can be.
That's why EVERYTHING available for UK buyers (and really the Western world), should be safety approved items. They shouldn't be able to just pop along to their local market (which IS covered by UK regulations, and is at least partially checked, from time to time), or buy unsafe items on ebay.
But in practice they can. So I don't have any easy/quick/realistic answers. Except to say, the range of potentially unsafe items for sale on ebay (foreign sellers), has got to huge numbers.
Also, some items seem to cause disputes, as to if they are unsafe or safe, in practice. A good example that comes to mind is those 'live', directly mains connect/live, internally heated, shower head, things.
Mains chargers and powerful rechargeable batteries, can be especially dangerous (electric shock (charger) and fire risks, both items). Yet members of the general public (in my experience), DON'T appreciate the potential dangers of such items.
tl;dr
This is obviously turning out to be a big and complicated subject area. Any change, will probably have to be made by governments round the world, rather than by us, engineers and other professions/hobbyists.
Or we would need to decide what needs to be fixed, and then campaign hard for the solution to be implemented.
Quotepeople should absolutely have the right to do electrical work themselvesif that was the case then fine,however the solution.part p ,restricts the scope of work not only the diy'er can do,but also time served electricians who aint part of the cartel,an example of such work,changing a light fitting in a bathroom,that can only can only legally be changed by a part p registered sparks
QuoteUK is already ridiculous enough. You want to make it worseso whats the real story behind that picture? yea at first glance it appears ridiculous,but try boarding a plane with any of those in your hand luggagePolice robbed a handyman walking down the street? It's had nothing to do with airport or sort of. Look at hashtag.
I'm sure that Agnes, 92, of Kent, considered all these things carefully before voting to dump the working generation in it...
Obviously one of the huge efficiencies of the EU single market is that 28-1 countries don't all have to do this on their own, duplicating this kind of work 28-1 times...
...As you say, just copying EU regulations is the only sane thing to do, until the brexiters figure out a way to float the entire island on pontoons and tow it to Asia?
To an extent, you have a point. But on the other hand, they (the EU), tend to over do it, in practice.
Take LED lamps as an example.
If just the UK on their own (going back 5 or 10 years or so, when they became or were becoming a thing), were sorting things out, they may have proceeded as follows:
- A new 8% tax, introduced on inefficient filament bulbs, of certain applicable types, starting in 2 years time (i.e. plenty of warning)
- 50% VAT relief on all LED bulb types, amounting to a 10% price reduction (for the next 8 years, by which time they expect LED lamp prices to have fallen dramatically)
- Lots of government sponsored adverts, such as in newspapers and on TV. Outlining the benefits of LED lamps and lighting
- Big grants and tax savings, for any new or existing, LED or LED lamp factories/companies, operating in the UK
- Home and business grants, for upgrading the current lighting to new LED lamps
Whereas the EU does the same thing, in a much more horrible, messy, red-tape ridden, huge number of extra clauses and things, making it rather heavy handed, and partly impracticable.
So the UK can have a nicer, more gentle nudging kind of way of gradually introducing LED lighting, with only half a page, of clear/concise new regulations/laws, in support of it.
Whereas the EU does it, with a 500+ page set of new laws, outright banning of virtually all filament bulbs, leaving people in the dark (both literally, and intentional pun, as regards the new regulations, i.e. people won't know about them, until it is too late).
The uk had the chance to make it black and white when part p was being discussed,one option was limiting the sale of electrical accessory's to licensed personnel only,but pressure from the diy chains put a stop to that idea.
Despite those efforts, LED bulbs in the UK were very expensive and not very common for years after they started getting cheap and widespread over here. I started buying Philips and Cree LED bulbs around 2010 when they were $40+ each and then within about a year they were half that and not long after they were just a few dollars each. I remember my friend over there lamenting at the lack of variety and high cost relative to what I could get which I thought was unusual given he was paying literally 3 times what I was for electricity and the US is not exactly known for jumping on the cutting edge "green" technology bandwagon.
There are definitely still applications where incandescent makes sense, but for the most part they were obsolete for general illumination 20 years ago. CFL had its issues but it was good enough that I had converted over to them by 1999. Regarding on/off cycles, that was an issue for CFLs but it should not be a problem for LEDs, no more so than with filament lamps at least. There are LED sign bulbs that work fine with chasers/scintilators that flash them rapidly all night long.
But people have their homes and businesses, in certain ways. So many people would much prefer to just replace the burnt out tungsten filament bulb, with a new 50p (£0.50) light bulb, than pay £10 or whatever for a new fangled LED light, which they DON'T understand, or want to touch with a very long barge pole.
. Electrical wiring is not rocket science, there is no wiring in a house that requires years of training to do safely and quite a lot of it is fairly trivial.
In the US there were many thousands of Federal Pacific brand circuit breaker panels installed that turned out to be sub-par
https://www.allelectric.com/blog/2019/october/the-danger-of-federal-pacific-circuit-breaker-pa/
There should have been a recall, but many of these are still in service just waiting to burn somebody's house down. The point being that greed often over powers safety no matter where you may be.
A big thanks to Big Clive for pointing out these totally fake breakers.
This is a link to Rapex database.
It is an EU database of dangerous non-food products.
Select: Category "Electrical appliances and equipment" and press "Search".
A dreamland for Big Clive.
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My prior house had a Federal Pacific distribution box with their breakers. Being new to the country (mid 2000s), I didn't know better and the inspector mentioned that this brand was not recommended anymore, mentioned that the cost of replacement would go upwards of one thousand dollars but said nothing about a real and present danger. My google searches at the time also did not mention anything in the direction of fires but only a similar sentence as shown in the linked article as well: "The CPSC claimed that the data did not establish 'that the circuit breakers pose a serious threat of injury to consumers.'" Being caught in the crossfire between contractors trying to reap the most money out of your pocket, the sheer amount of stress moving to a new country and reassured by the statement above, I ended up not replacing the panel.
if thats the case why is uk domestic electrical work one of the most regulated areas? Theirs nothing stopping anyone from wiring a factory or renting a generator and cobbling together the power for an outdoor event,the only thing that would be used against them,and only if things go wrong, is the electrical supplies act.meanwhile dare to do something as trivial as putting a fan in the shower room and your in a world of illegality
I don't know your exact timeline, but there was a class action lawsuit and explicit recall of Federal Pacific service panels in New Jersey, but the CPSC, as you note, did not demand a recall initially and by the time everyone realized that they should have, Federal Pacific was long gone. There are still thousands of homes here in CA with those as well as Zinsco/Sylvania boxes with the infamous Magnetek breakers.
We have a Zinsco panel in our cabin which was wired in 1973. They're notorious for being problematic but this one is in very good condition and I inspect it regularly so I don't plan on replacing it unless it has problems. It helps that it's a vacation home so it spends most of the time shut off. I'm also not the sort who is going to ignore obvious signs of a problem like flickering lights or arcing noises.
You're braver than I am. Bus bar arcing is the most spectacular problem that people notice, but the other problem with these is that the breakers may not trip on even a severe overload. You can buy new imported clone breakers for these nowadays, those are probably better than the originals.
I wish that hiring professionals, union or licensed electricians assured that the work was done correctly. In some ways I would rather see an amateur do the work. Then I know to look it over carefully.
My son recently bought a house and it took me three days to straighten out most of the problems. The story from the previous homeowner was that the electrician he hired to fix the problems just got started and then killed himself in a recreational activity. A second electrician was hired but was making little or no progress. The son was in a hurry to close the purchase and accepted it as is.
So I'm saying, best get some real regulations, as folks themselves don't always care.
I wish that hiring professionals, union or licensed electricians assured that the work was done correctly. In some ways I would rather see an amateur do the work. Then I know to look it over carefully.
My son recently bought a house and it took me three days to straighten out most of the problems. The story from the previous homeowner was that the electrician he hired to fix the problems just got started and then killed himself in a recreational activity. A second electrician was hired but was making little or no progress. The son was in a hurry to close the purchase and accepted it as is.
That's kind of surprising. Say what you will about unions, but I was under the impression that they did at least train their workers well. The only union electrician I ever knew was my uncle and he always did top notch work and taught me the same, but then he's just that type of person in general, he's the least sloppy person I know, his house has always been neat as a pin, even the attic is clean with lights and shelving and everything sorted, anyway you get the point.
A friend of mine had a house fire and the restoration company did terrible work. Sloppy stuff all over, I don't know if they were union or not but I suspect not. I fixed a bunch of stuff there after it was supposedly finished, some lights and receptacles didn't work, I found wires that had popped out of the stupid backstab terminals because they weren't pushed in all the way and the hardware was all the absolute cheapest of cheap residential grade junk. From what my friend told me it sounds like most of the actual work was done by an apprentice, who should have been well supervised but apparently was not.
My house is a split level that was one of those ones sold in the late 70s as an inexpensive starter home with an unfinished daylight basement. It was very obvious that the downstairs was wired by an amateur while the upstairs was done professionally. After I happened to change a couple of receptacles and saw the work it was clear that I needed to go through and redo it all. The guy didn't know how to fold the wires back in the junction boxes so he cut them off so they were just long enough that they could be poked into the backstab terminals as the receptacle was pushed back into the box. Not really unsafe, just sloppy and difficult to maintain. I had to pigtail every one of them. The biggest telltale for me to indicate amateur work is they will strip off just enough of the outer jacket to connect the wires, rather than stripping it back to within a half inch of the box entry as code requires. Again not really a safety issue but it's immediately recognizable as sloppy non-compliant work that merits further inspection.
Quote. Electrical wiring is not rocket science, there is no wiring in a house that requires years of training to do safely and quite a lot of it is fairly trivial.if thats the case why is uk domestic electrical work one of the most regulated areas? Theirs nothing stopping anyone from wiring a factory or renting a generator and cobbling together the power for an outdoor event,the only thing that would be used against them,and only if things go wrong, is the electrical supplies act.meanwhile dare to do something as trivial as putting a fan in the shower room and your in a world of illegality