Unisolated electrical wires in my roof
We just recently bought a house and yesterday I got up in the roof and found what looks like unisolated electrical wires. But Im not sure what it is.
If it is indeed electrical wires, then I don't think an electrical certificate should have been issued for the transferral of the property? What do you guys think?
Here is an image
http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z359/pietervwyk/IMG_20120809_094624.jpg
When certificates are issued as a rule they just test the insulation on the wiring and if all the plugs have earth.
There seems to be PVC insulation on those wires ,but looks hodge podge to me .
If it walks like a duck and kwaks like a duck ..its a duck
I'm no electrician, but I know that the earth wires often are just uninsulated multistrand copper wires.
If however there are bare wires running from the insulators(White) across the roof then it must be a very old house. that is how they ran the wiring in the roof many moons ago!
+1Originally Posted by hansotto
The bare wires across white ceramic insulators were still legal when I renovated a turn-of-the-century house 30 years ago ...
This is not lekker but is also not illegal. If it were my house, I would either replace the cable with surfex or else insert it into conduit. The danger of wires like you have is if you trip over a cable or stand on a live wire that makes it touch an earth point like the top of that pipe.
The electrician who did this should be fired. At least it is PVC insulation.
Is this house in Johannesburg? You will never see work like this in Cape Town
contact Approved Inspecting Authority if you in CT
Thanks guys. Nope its in Bloem. It is quite an old house. Beautiful, but old.
So in short, I have fo have it fixed up on my own account since it is actually legal?
Before a house could be registered in your name, the previous owner would have needed to get an Electrical Compliance Certificate ... have a look at that certificate, and if no mention was made about that shoddy roof-wiring them the sparky that issued the ECC deserves to be shot.
those wires are perfectly legal in older houses (pre 1992) and by itself will not fail a CoC, not allowed in new installations though. no need to replace or put them in pvc conduit. if you have the money go ahead and do it. All the wiring in my house from 1962 (also in Bloem) look like that, they are all 4mm2 wire compared to the much thinner 2.5mm2 used in new installations these days, unless the insulation is damage it would be stupid to replace it.
Last edited by Goobie; 09-08-2012 at 05:04 PM.
This.
And if the electrician that did the compliance did a dodge job then he can get into big doo doo. Get the electrical bostd to come and inspect and if there are any shortcuts he took he will be called back to fix it else loose his licence.
Most ECC's these days are purely pieces of paper...
I managed to get mine for my house (AFTER I had moved in) and it gives it a 100% clean bill of health, but the electrics are absolutely atrocious, lighting wire used to run plugs etc etc etc...
**EDIT**
So its very clear that there are electricians out there who will sign the certificate purely for the bill, they check absolutely nothing.
Last edited by ToxicBunny; 09-08-2012 at 09:49 PM. Reason: More clarity.
Rather irresponsible of you. What if the house burnt down with a family in it? How would you feel then? Just because you didn't want to pay to do it right?
Electricians can be stripped of their licences for such practice, and trust me, they are very strict when it comes to this. You are playing with peoples lives.
Wait, I should rather clarify what I meant... (I will edit my original post to be more specific)
I didn't sell my house with dodgy electrics and get a ECC.
I mean I got the ECC that the previous owner managed to get, AFTER I discovered how pisspoor the electrics were. I will have to rewire my entire house at some point in the not too distant future.
Sorry, misunderstood your post.
I recently moved into a new house and due to complication after complication the compliance still has not been done. Now I have a sneaking suspicion that the owner / agent is going to try pull a fast one on me. First they asked me to get my own electrician to quote on the compliance cert, which he did, spent about 3 hours on site for the quote came back with a R27k bill, that is how bad the electrics are, and I know him and he is not a rip off artist. Then amazingly the owner insisted we use the estate agents electrician. He came to quote, was there for no longer than 30 minutes, didn't even climb into the ceiling. I haven't seen the quoted amount, but I have warned absolutely everyone that after he is done I will get the Gauteng electrical compliance board out at my own cost to inspect, and god help the electrician and the agent if they have tried to pull a fast one.
One thing you don't mess around with and that is dodgey electrics. Rather get yours done Toxic, if its that bad you could be sitting on a ticking time bomb.
I am sitting on a ticking timebomb, but I will be doing major renovations soon which requires me to move the DB board... so I will be re-wiring the whole house at that point.
If I had been more on the ball with this purchase I would follow the same as you and actually get the compliance board out after the fact, and make the electrician and owner suffer. There were a good few latent defects that the owner hid during "show" days... but it was just easier, quicker and cheaper for me to fix them myself...
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