On Tue, 04 Oct 2011 07:51:56 -0700, chrisj.doran%proemail.co.uk wrote:

On Oct 4, 4:32Â*am, "Roberts" wrote:
I was contacted by phone and told that my fuse box was over 40 years
old and needed to be replaced. The company Electrical Safety Group gave
the impresion that they were linked to a energy supplier. They came to
the house and checked the wiring and left a a list of things to be done
costing about £800 on reading their inspection report they say (in
small print) at the bottom of the page that they are not part of any
public energy supplier. I am beginning to think that this is some sort
of scam. What do the panel of experts think? Someone in this newsgroup
must know more than me Thanks in advance
Robbie

There are two kinds of "fusebox": the _company_ fusebox between the
cables coming in from the street and the meter which you (should) never
touch, and the one between the meter and the house wiring, normally
referred to as a "consumer unit", where you replace fuses yourself.

It's most unlikely that the electricity company would know anything
about the age of your CU. Maybe Electrical Safety Group have been
contracted to deal with replacements of company fuseboxes (wholly at the
company's expense) and are riding on this to do "free safety checks" of
customers' installations. Nothing inherently wrong with this, but they
should not be scaring people into unnecessary work. A Watchdog
investigation a while back found cowboy firms replacing consumer units
unnecessarily (even a brand new one that a former cowboy had done them
for the previous day). If ESG are in this category, they should be
reported to some or all of the power company, Trading Standards (see
your Council's website), and/or people like Watchdog.

Latest cold-calling craze around here is "Have you had your government
grant for top-up loft insulation?" As it's not a 100% grant and you
can't DIY, I doubt if it's financially worthwhile.

Chris

Funny, had a guy last week knocking ... his little face fell, when I
detailed exactly what we had done, down to the draught excluder on the
bin store door.

We did very well out of that, actually. We had the loft completely
insulated, plus the loft hatch. Cavity wall insulation. And, because we
are a unique property, apparently, (3 bed bungalow with a ludicrously
large footprint) a team from Cardiff University paid us £150 to have some
24/7 wall sensors fitted (they were poles that went between floor and
ceiling with a probe that touched the wall) for a week before, and a week
after. The guy in charge of the study was a real geek ... it's rare to
meet someone that is *that* into their work. I got several brownie points
for my recollection of black box radiation ... and he did an external
survey, with an IR camera, which showed that we were very well insulated.