All electrical installations deteriorate due to damage, wear & tear, corrosion, excessive electrical loading, age, and environmental influences.
Legislation requires that all electrical installations are maintained in a safe condition.
An EICR is an abbreviation for Electrical Installation Condition Report, which is essential to ensure the safety of you, your family, employees, tenants, members of the public and visitors to your property or premises.
We inspect fixed wiring for compliance with IET Wiring Regulations BS7671 as amended”. Compliance with this normally satisfy the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 (EAWR), but a licenced premises may have different requirements which take precedence.
A brief categorised summary is: Adequacy of the earthing and bonding. The suitability of the switch and control gear. The condition of the wiring systems. Serviceability of the equipment & accessories. Presence of identification & notices. Extent of wear & tear damage and deterioration. Changes of use to the building which may lead to deficiencies to the electrical installation.
Depending on the size of the premises we could be an hour or many days, we would have a make an assessment during a survey, but as a rule of thumb for a homeowner a three-bed semidetached property would be around three hours. And yes, we would have to turn the power off to safely carry out any electrical works.
The first question I would need to ask is what type of property is it and what are its uses; For instance, if it’s a private rental house it would be every five years or change of tenant. We will seek guidance from IET Wiring Regulations Guidance Note 3 on different types of properties and their use.
In short, yes, however if there is a reason, we can’t access areas or rooms within a property we can list these as a limitation on the Electrical Installation Condition Report. But it is best practice to access all the property to conduct an actuate assessment of the electrical safety.
Yes that’s not a problem, we have a very high success rate at making arrangements for the Tennant to let us access the property so we can carry out the essential electrical inspection works, we will even text them a day or two before to make sure the appointment to kept – It’s all part of the service.
Yes – we call these works remedial works; we normally issue the EICR then wait for instruction from the person(s) ordering the inspection works to request a Fixed Price Quotation from us. However, in the event there is immediate danger we will contact you and discuss how you would like to proceed.
Don’t panic, if we get the Code 1 items rectified without delay, and the Code 2 items rectified as soon as possible then we will be able to issue a Satisfactory EICR. Any Code 3 items can be completed as part of planned maintenance work.
