ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Non-US Electrical Systems & Trades DIY Work

>especially when you live in an apartment where you can't easily shut off power to your own fuse box.

That's why in Austria we always have main fuses ahead of the meter, conveniently accessible (usually in the stairway) but outside the tenant's panel. So it's possible to completely cut power to the panel.

Hi Guys,
Sven, added an important note here, he may do DIY work, but at least he is sure of what he is allowed to legally do.
The real problem is the first-time DIYer, who thinks that they can do the whole damn lot, they know nothing about safety practices, and are normally the roughest people.

>The real problem is the first-time DIYer,
>who thinks that they can do the whole damn
>lot, they know nothing about safety
>practices, and are normally the roughest
>people.

The real danger are the people that just doesn't care or even like to make the wiring as dangerous as possible. I spent a summer behind the counter in an electrics store and met a number of these people. They always want the cheapest of everything, no matter the quality or suitability. I sold one guy an unusually long length of ungrounded zip cord. When asked what he was going to use it for, he told me that it was for wiring his outdoor lights.

Me: "But, this cable must not be used for installations, let alone outdoors!"

Guy: "Haha! Then you should see the rest of the wiring I've done!"

I'm 100% sure I don't want to see it...

This stupidity is not limited to men. There are a number of females with the same attitude, although fewer. One lady showed up with an iron with a cord that had caught fire in four (!) places. She refused to replace the cord, she just needed a temporary "fix" of it. (In addition to three that were already there.) Need I add that the plug was smashed, exposing live parts?

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
That is why I want to see DIY limited to replacement of damaged accessories.
DIYers do not have appropriate test equipment, let alone the knowledge to use it or interpret results.
As we all know, with electricity everything can appear OK but you could have no adequate earthing or have reverse polarity. Without the appropriate testing kit, how can you be sure?
In all the years I have worked in this trade I have yet to see a DIY job without defects, one day I will post some photos to back this up.

Too many have no real idea what they're doing at all.

David, the folks buying cables down at B&Q or HomeBase on a Saturday morning sounds very familiar. I've mentioned this in another thread before, but one concern of mine over this point is the way these places put labels on the racks which indicate the current rating -- Always the absolute maximum for "clipped direct," never a word about derating for other situations.

Permitting only qualified people to carry out work sounds very good from the safety angle, but I'm not sure we should go down that road.

True, some people are so stupid that they should never even be allowed to change a fuse, but I'm not at all happy about restricting people's right to carry out work on their own home if they so wish.

That aside, I don't see how it could be effectively enforced. How is anyone going to know that somebody has added unauthorized wiring to his house?

Restricting sales of cable and fittings to licensed people would be of limited effectiveness. If somebody can't get the proper cable, he'll probably just use flex instead.

This is exactly what has happened in Sweden. We have gone down the road David wants and it didn't work out too well. People aren't prepared to pay those £30 per hour for an electrican and use the flex cord instead.

If you look back through the archives in the general discussion area, you'll see that this subject also crops up regularly in America, where rules vary tremendously not only from state to state, but sometimes from county to county and city to city.

I don't think there is a simple answer. Ultimately, people have to take some responsibility for their own actions and recognize when they are out of the depth and need to call professional help. Just how we get them to do the latter is another problem with no easy solution.....

Paul, that's a very good point you brought up about the availability of cable, I've seen I don't know have many installations done with Flex,by DIY people.
It seems to be a mentality, of what ever you can get(to do the job), will do.
And the regulators haven't really helped either, they send out all these Codes of Practice and so forth, but, nowhere have I ever seen a New Zealand guide to Wiring, since the new Regulations allowed Homeowners to do thier own wiring, so how the Hell are they supposed to know?.
:mad

Good point Trumpy. The D-I-Y stores are full of cables, switches, sockets, breakers and you-name-it. But to the best of my knowledge, there is no how-to-guide in Swedish. There are books for the electrican's education, but not available to the general public.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing" In my humble opinion, people should not be allowed to buy materials unless they have a license. This of course would only work if there is a system with limited licenses, possible to obtain for D-I-Y'ers. A license would of course be required to carry out any electrical work.

Our present solution with licenses impossible to obtain unless you plan a career as an electrican (two or so years working as an apprentice under an electrician) is impossible to enforce.

Adding to the problem is that in days of old people had cars to play with. Now that you can't work on cars anymore, people turn to computers or home improvement instead. And the most technical part of home improvment is wiring...

There is no shortage of "How To" books in Britain. Library shelves and book stores are filled with them, including many electrical ones.

I've often borrowed the latter from my local library to see what advice they offer, and I've found that the advice varies from quite good to downright misleading. The ones which annoy me the most are those which are written with the assumption that somebody is starting with a modern house which was wired using the methods predominating in the last 20 years or so. They often omit any reference to earlier methods, and I would have thought that these are the houses most likely to be "attacked" by the DIYer.

On the limited license issue, I'm still not sure that it would work. It might sound like to a good way to ensure that the person doing work on his house has at least some basic knowledge, but most people will just ignore it anyway. It is illegal to install ones own gas pipework in a house in the U.K., but that doesn't stop people from doing it.

I can see a limited license scheme just becoming another layer of cumbersome bureaucracy that ends up costing thousands without really achieving anything. We have more than enough of those schemes already.