Unsatisfactory EICR - Should I buy the house

[icedearth213]

Hello All,

I am looking to purchase a house built in the 1900s.

The house had tenants and the current EICR is valid until 2025.
For my peace of mind, I paid for an EICR test to be carried out. The EICR certificate report is unsatisfactory. I was quoted £900 to fix all these faults by the company that carried out the EICR test. The electrician told me there is no rewiring needed.

The seller is not willing to fix the faults and he is also not willing to reduce the price.

Could you let me know if these faults are serious enough which may mean there are further hidden faults once the repair starts and that I may required to pay additional costs.

Should I repair it myself or walk away from the purchase?

I would appreciate your advice.

Many thanks.

I'd be concerned about the leaking boiler!

Exactly!
The electrics look ok, nothing major and no need to spend £900 fixing it.

The leak is from the stopcock tap underneath the boiler. The boiler itself isn't leaking.

I'm not an electrician, but I have recently had an EICR on a property that ran to 5 pages of failure points (I mean it was a proper comical 'farmer' job- the switch for the bathroom light was in the bedroom next door, cables chased behind wallpaper with no trunking, some of the switches were from the ark!) resulting in a full rewire and external electrical connection etc etc etc.

Nothing on there looks to disastrous, get a second quote from someone based on that report and go from there.

Thank you all for your advice.

Firstly, although it does say it at the top of the report familiarise yourself with the levels ie what a C2 means in a bit more detail so you feel better informed. Also what section they failed under ie 3.1 and 4.21 as listed on your report

www.intersafe.co.uk/fixed-wire-testing-observation-codes-c1-c2-c3-and-fi-explained/

www.manorprimary.com/usr/docs/2018/6/Manor%20Primary%20-%205Yr%20Fixed%20Wiring%20Cert%2014-08-17a.pdf

I am NOT an electrician but watch a lot of electrician videos because I like to understand things.

Bonding is the earthing wires needed as you have copper pipes, they can see there are earthing cables leaving the MET (main earthing terminal) but they cannot see any earthing on the pipes ie under your kitchen sink. That would need investigating as to why there doesn't appear to be any.

"No CPC sleeving" wires are twin and earth, so brown cable, blue cable and then a bare copper wire. The bare bit of the copper wire should be sheathed in green and yellow wire sleeving which is slipped over the wire covering all the exposed copper for safety reasons. This hasn't happened somewhere.

C2s are the worry and need sorting but not life threatening just urgent and the "poor condition" means the plates need updating. The good news is no rewire is needed but there is work needed to make everything safe.

In my honest opinion, stuff like this I wouldn't leave to the seller to do anyway. I would want an electrician I contacted to do the works afterwards then you have them as a contact yourself for the work they did. It is nothing dire and I would still go ahead and buy the property. And yes although all electricians are supposed to work to a standard/code etc you only have to watch electrician videos on YouTube to see how badly it can go wrong, ie not tightened a wire in a shower cable led to a fire in the house. I like Artisan Electric's videos as they are perfectionists.

That's a very good EICR on a used house OP. To the contrary, I'd be very pleased with that. Absolutely not concerning or even anything that you can really negotiate with.

I think I will get a second opinion on the repair costs and have it repaired myself.

Thank you all for your advice.