"John" wrote in message
...
"BigWallop" wrote in message
...

"Peter" wrote in message
...
Hi
I know that electrical work should be carried out by a "competent
person"
and I count myself as being competent though I am not a qualified
electrician
.
However how would an insurance company treat work carried out in my home
by
myself?
If there was a fire or person electrocuted even if not directly from
the
work that I had done but would the fact that I had done some work count
against me? Would the insurance company still cover a claim?

What about doing some work for a friend - putting in an extra socket,
unpaid. I would be concerned that if he had an electrical fault
unrelated to
the socket that I had put in his insurance company would refuse to
consider
a claim because I had made an alteration.

How do insurance companies treat DIY for yourself or a friend?

Regards
Peter



If it's a fire caused by an electrical fault and the fire investigator
found that it
was your work that had caused it, how would you feel ? Are you covered by
liabilities
insurance for doing this type or similar work ? If the fire investigator
found that
the fire started in a totally different room from where you had been
working, but that
the work you carried out on the circuit caused the overload because of you
didn't know
that the circuit couldn't take the load you applied to it, how would you
feel ?


How would an investigator ever prove that the work was recent? Only a fool
would say that they had just been doing electrical work!


The work doesn't have to be recent. It could have been done years before it caused a
fire. The point is that it was your work that caused the fire and the investigator
found that it was this installation that caused the break out of the fire.

It still comes back to the person who carried out the installation.


Maybe that's why the government are trying to introduce new legislation to
make it law
that any work be certificated by a qualified fully trained person, and are
trying to
stop the rot of the DIYer on this type work. It is dangerous to play
around with
electrical, gas and building installations if you don't know what and how
things work
on them.
Won't that make it a big problem for elcectricians, needing to check all
their qualifications, update courses every 5 years or so, I don't see it
ever happening for real



But that's what any professional tradesperson does. They never stop learning their
trade because it changes by the day sometimes. So if the current specifications say
that I can't work on certain installations because I don't have the qualifications to
do so, then I can't work on it, simple as that. If then, I did ignore the rules and
carried out work on something that caused injury or worse, and it was then found that
I had ignored the rules governing that type of installation. I could be, and probably
would if an insurance company was involved, taken to court and sued to within an inch
of my life savings.

So, if you have any doubt in your ability to carry out a certain type of work, and you
have no one to supervise and inspect the work you've carried to make sure it is done
satisfactorily, then leave it alone. Especially if it could mean other peoples lives.