Do NOT get cheated by an unscrupulous electrician!
Do NOT get cheated by an unscrupulous electrician!
I went to a old ladies house recently and was absolutely horrified by the fact that she was about to have a very expensive, not to mention very invasive rewire on a bungalow. This lady was obviously in a late 70s and I’ve been a widow for almost 10 years and she was exactly the kind of fodder for a conman. In actual fact I’ve been called to replace the battery in the burglar alarm panel, but whilst I was there we got chatting and she told me that the power had been switched off because the lights were fusing and she’d had an electrician. He had told her that the wiring was substandard and dangerous and this ad obviously scared her into a complete so-called emergency rewire the following week.
On a quick inspection of the fuse box within a few minutes it was obvious to me that this building had been rewired in the late 1970s in PVC double insulated cable and everything was earthed and safe !!!!. Okay the consumer unit was a little out of date with rewire able fuses instead of circuit breakers and the main earthling to the services was a little out of date, but overall it was fine.
She told me that she could not switch the lights on because they continually fused, but I investigated and literally within 10 minutes it turned out to be one of the obvious things it usually is, in this case was just a metal lamp holder which had baked the wires inside itself because it was in an enclosed lampshade collecting the heat. I’m not blowing my own trumpet, but when you’ve been in the job for many years you usually know very quickly what the problem is and in my case this could be a electrical installation, a security alarm or a CCTV system. It’s very rare you cannot pinpoint the fault quickly because you’ve seen it so many times before it’s obvious. I fixed the fault switch the power back on and everything was back to normal and she didn’t have to spend her quoted £2600 on a rewire that wasn’t necessarily!
It’s so annoying what kind of world is this! You get not just a conman but sometimes some a jobs worth electrician comes along and says your installation is over 20 years old and you need a complete rewire Rubbish!
Even if it’s over 30 years old very often the wiring is earthed and double PVC insulated which has not deteriorated and is fine. Things might not be up to code their standards, but you should not be told you have to change things which might not be up to current day standards and wiring regulations, because they were fine when they were installed and they are still safe.
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t point out things which could be improved like a new consumer unit with earth leakage protection breaker and current overload breakers. And I might suggest also that new main earthling would be a good idea, but it’s best to put this in its true perspective and point out it’s not dangerous and it certainly doesn’t warrant a full rewire etc
Anyway on this occasion a little old lady is happy because she’s got a new battery in her alarm panel and the power is back on and she only had to fork out £50 which is much cheaper than £2500 she’d been facing!
Next time I might start on security alarm companies 
don’t get me going with their misleading contracts making people believe they have bought the equipment when they’re basically renting it and when the security alarm triggers for any reason, they’re forced to have an engineer out every time because it has a locked out with a engineers code ! I could rant on forever, it’s not just individuals it sometimes companies which also have unscrupulous codes of practice which are just geared to extract money from their vulnerable customers.
AD Alarms. www.adalarms.co.uk We specialise in CCTV and Security Alarm installations established 1984. We are a family run business based in Bradford West Yorkshire and Whitby North Yorkshire. Friendly free advice on the telephone telephone (01274) 614650 E-mail sales@adalarms.co.uk
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