Electrician's advice needed for letted property please!

Hello everyone

A friend of mine rents out a house in essex and the last tenants have just left.

A prospective new tenant has stated that in order to rent the property, my friend must replace the old fuse box with a new consumer board as cannot get fuse wire for it anymore.

There have never been any problems reported with the electrics and my friend has spare fuse wire if needed, although it never has been so far...but when she told the letting agent this, this was their reply...

ELECTRICS FOR YOUR GUIDANCE :

 

As you know, it is important to ensure that any electrical fittings within the property are safe and in good working order. Unlike gas regulations, there is no statute law currently, that says you must have a landlord electrical safety certificate however we strongly recommend that electrical safety checks are done on a regular basis and an electrical certificate obtained.

 

A change of tenancy particularly after a property has been let out for some considerable time and particularly with older electrics which are not meeting current regulations is the time to have this done and we cannot emphasis enough the importance of getting this done as a priority.

 

Apart from the Landlord’s Common Law duty of care, the Landlord & Tenant Act 1985 (and several other statutory regulations) requires that the electrical equipment is safe at the start of every tenancy and maintained in a safe condition throughout the tenancy.

 

Electrical hazards are also covered by the Housing Health and safety Rating System under the Housing Act 2004.

 

If you let property you must ensure that the electrical system and all appliances supplied are safe – failure to comply with the Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 1994 and The Consumer Protection Act 1987 is a criminal offence and may result in:

 

A fine of £5,000 per item not complying

Six month’s imprisonment

Possible manslaughter charges in the event of deaths

The Tenant may also sue you for civil damages

Your property insurance may be invalidated

So obviously my friend is now very concerned and got a quote to get a new consumer board for £360.

I think this is a waste of money and entirely unnecessary, but she's now terrified because of this letter from the letting agent.

What is your advice please?

I feel that it is just scare-mongering, but then I'm not a sparky!

Thanks

Sol

Personally I would have a new consumer unit fitted-it is a useful upgrade.I have recently commissioned a periodic safety check which cost £180.This will be valid for perhaps ten years,and equates to £0.36 a week or 5 pence daily.It is really rather cheap seen this way.The incident shows your landlord friend is quite unsuited to the task.

It is certainly not scare-mongering. A modern consumer unit up to the 17th edition regulations can save lives and property. An old wired 30 amp fuse can carry over 80 amp before it finally blows causing wiring to get hot and therefore become a potential fire hazard. Old consumer units have no RCD protection meaning the current does not switch off in the case of someone getting an electric shock. Tell you friend to get it changed as soon as possible.

There have never been any problems reported with the electrics...

Not necessarily a good sign. If there's too high a current going through but the fuses aren't tripping, you wouldn't realise there's a problem; at least until the house burns down one day.

the state of electrics in many private rented properties is frankly appalling and dangerous. many of these are buy-to-let properties are mortgaged by people who dont have the assets to keep them in good order. they are quite happy to drag £500-600 or more in rent out of the poor tenant every month, but this only just pays the mortgage.

buy to let mortgage lenders should make it a requirement to have up to date gas and electric certificates. insurers may not pay out if there is an incident involving these utilities. the landlord could lose their house and the tenant, their life.

worth the landlord getting a loan and having the whole house utilities brought up to date.

if anything happens to his tenant, he may be liable.

from a wiring regs point of view its not retrospective as such, so they arent obliged to replace it with a modern board just for the sake of it if its all safe n sound currently. however it needs to be in suitable condition to pass a safety inspection and test, and should any new works be done in the property the electrican may have to ensure the new work was 17th edition compliant, ie provide rcd/rbco etc for certain locations or cable runs etc. at that point you'd have to add a new board etc, so its a moot point, and personally i'd look to have it changed, tested and have a certificate available for the new tenant.

the state of electrics in many private properties is frankly appalling and dangerous..

Fixed that for you

I found this one out for myself last year when we were looking to buy a house, we viewed so many houses and so often when we asked about the electrics the answer was "oh I dunno" or "well it's never gone wrong, so we never touched it"

A quick look round and you'll notice one single plug socket per room, with about 20 extensions running off it

Sure 'back in the day' when you only had a table lamp, or radio/telly plugged in this was fine - but now these people have all sorts of junk running off a single socket, including whopping great electrical heaters!!!!

On top of the legal implications, some insurance policies also have requirements for periodic inspection or at least for the wiring to be maintained in a safe condition.

Personally I'd have it changed, I did in my own home.

Fixed that for you

 

I found this one out for myself last year when we were looking to buy a house, we viewed so many houses and so often when we asked about the electrics the answer was "oh I dunno" or "well it's never gone wrong, so we never touched it"

 

A quick look round and you'll notice one single plug socket per room, with about 20 extensions running off it

 

Sure 'back in the day' when you only had a table lamp, or radio/telly plugged in this was fine - but now these people have all sorts of junk running off a single socket, including whopping great electrical heaters!!!!

yup, that's how i got involved in electrics. we had an adaptor in the ceiling light socket. the bulb was in one, and a wire from the other went across to the corner of the room to feed the tv. i was babysitter one night, being the eldest. shortly after mum and dad went out, the tv went off but the ceiling light remained lit. faced with a night without tv, i decided to investigate! i discovered that part way along the wire it had a strip connector fitted to extend the length of wire. i noticed that one of the wires had come out. as i was about to reconnect it, i noticed the insulation had not been stripped back enough to ensure good electrical contacts. being the genius i was at about 12 years old! i decided to redo all the ends. so, i equipped myself with penknife, scissors, screwdriver and a pile of newspaper to make the fire burn bright enough for me to see what i was doing, and, after turning out the light, i set to work! alas, my newspaper burned too quickly for me to make any progress. so, i reasoned that, as the circuit would not be complete until i re-inserted the last wire, it would be safe to keep the light on until i reached this point. alas, i forgot. as i inserted the last wire there was a huge flash and a bang. everything went black and my sister came downstairs to see what i was screaming at. apart from blackened fingers and tools. what hurt most was the belt i got from my dad.

things always work great until there is a fault, that's when you find out how safe your electrics are.

The agent's letter is not scaremongering. It is just laying out the information a landlord needs to know. It does not say the electrics are unsafe.

Neither does the tenant. Only a Electrical Installation Condition report (EICR) from a Qualified Electrician can confirm that the installation is safe/unsafe at the time of the inspection. Without an EICR you cannot prove the installation was ever safe, and thus an EICR is a really a minimum, although the letting agent is correct; there is currently no legal requirement to have an EICR. But you do have a duty of care to the tenant to supply a safe electrical installation, and unless you are a qualified electrician how do you know it is safe?

Similarly, if the Landlord is supplying any electrical appliances to the tenants, these also need to be safe. Portable Appliance Testing (PAT) is the only practical way for landlords to prove that the equipment they supplied was safe at some point in time.

A good electrician will inspect and test the installation before quoting to change the consumer unit to make sure they know the state of the installation before they start work, but will only produce a EICR if you have paid them to do so.

RCDs increase the safety of the installation massively, and should really be mandatory but they are not.

So your friend should have an EICR produced (it will cost about £100 or so depending on the size of installation and will reduce the cost of any eventual consumer unit change.) If the EICR confirms the fuse board and the rest of the installation is safe, your friend can leave the fuse board in place in the certain knowledge that the installation is safe enough. Fuse wire can still be obtained, and your friend can always supply a bundle as she will have saved a few hundred pounds.

It is certainly not scare-mongering. A modern consumer unit up to the 17th edition regulations can save lives and property. An old wired 30 amp fuse can carry over 80 amp before it finally blows causing wiring to get hot and therefore become a potential fire hazard. Old consumer units have no RCD protection meaning the current does not switch off in the case of someone getting an electric shock. Tell you friend to get it changed as soon as possible.

^^^This^^^

I recently had an RCD fitted to replace an old fuse board as part of renovating my new home. The oven worked fine before i had it fitted. Now everytime i turn the oven on it trips the electrics at 170c temp. Two electricians have said that the oven is pulling too much current as its knackered & i need a new one.

Considering before i used the oven at 200-220c temp, god knows what the old fuse box was playing at.

It cost £300 to replace the fuse board. £300 well spent, i think

we havent even got started on smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

these should be mandatory in all properties.

what is your life worth?