Electric saftey check - recommendations please

[monkeytrousers]

Can anyone recommend a company who will check the electrics in our house and do it honestly?

bump

Do you have a particular concern?

Do you have a modern consumer board and know when the house was wired?

You may get a check via your energy provider or ask around for a reputable local electrician

If it is an older property or hsa had work done by persons unknown then it is likely to need updating but it may not be possible to identify problems by a superficial test.

It's my MIL's house and has had alot of electrical DIY. I haven't a clue if it's old or not but I posted before wanting to put a circuit breaker onto the main junction box and was told a reputable electrician needed to do it. Do energy providers do that? NPower?

does it have fuses or trip switches or is that what you mean by putting in circuit breakers?

A local sparky would be able to install a £50 fusebox, with mini breakers, (or MCB inserts only perhaps) in place of the existing fusebox. I'd estimate this would take only a handful of hours if s/he knew what they were doing and no relocation was required and there is a bit of slack on the wires going into the existing one. It's probably the best way to assure MCBs on any circuits you wish to protect.

Isolating an individual circuit and fitting a double pole breaker thingy would probably cost only a little less.

BTW, you know you can protect individual outlets with a plug in breaker ? That might be your best / cheapest bet.

I think the 'free safety check' of Npower recommended people are probably v. expensive and certainly the safety check people who upsell electrical work are supposed to be somewhat dodge.

HTH

Hmmmm. Thing is I have no idea what we have already. There is a box with seperate switches but as you can probably tell by reading this I'm not too clued up about it. I just want to make it safe in case ds decides to stickj something in a socket. I read in some shild manual that you can get a circuit breaker fitted 'just to be on the safe side'. Do most fuse boxes have these anyway? Sorry to be such a dunce!

'Free' wiring checks aren't worth having-I know,I used to book them.All the electrician will do is look at the wiring behind a socket ect,look at the fusebox & say that it either needs upgrading & leave a quote,or that it doesn't.They can't tell you if its safe or not.

Your best bet is to look for an electrician who is a member of the ECA or NICEIC,the NICEIC in particular is set up to protect the consumers interests ,not the electricians.

monkeyt, I'd probably just recommend those plastic little guards then to stop children prodding. You know, the ones you push in, probably cost a quid each or sommit.

An MCB would, in theory, break the circuit quicker, and in greater safety, but I'm not honestly sure it's worth doing if the wiring is otherwise perfectly sound and 'to regs' IYSWIM...

Thanks all. I'm gonna try to find a NICEIC acredited 'leccy today. x