Silly Saturday: Silly Electricians!

We moved into our house (built in 1904) over 30 years ago. The electrics were in a bad way so we had it rewired. However, being relatively impoverished at the time we accepted the cheapest quote for the work, which in retrospect was a mistake. Over the years we've discovered more and more "cut corners": the worst of these was the inadequate number of lighting circuits, meaning that if all the lights on a particular circuit were switched on at once, the circuit breaker would pop - clearly our electrician couldn't do sums to add up his watts. In those days, of course, the modern more-efficient fluorescent and LED light bulbs weren't available so we couldn't alleviate the problem that way.

We'd taken a bit of a dislike to the guy so we didn't call him back - I did a "temporary" workaround, adding an extra lighting circuit on a fused spur off a ring main which had spare capacity (there were no spare "ways" on the consumer unit). Perfectly safe but not exactly "kosher". The trouble with "temporary" is that it tends to become rather permanent!

A few years back we had a new garage built, with an electric supply for the first time. Subsequently when I inspected it I discovered that it hadn't been wired in accord with the regulations - in spite of it having been inspected by a "qualified" electrician (who'd also said we didn't need a "certificate" - when I later found that we did. Hmmm).

So I thought it was time to get a full inspection done by someone else, and he agreed with all my concerns. As major DIY electrical work is now strongly discouraged by the authorities (and needs inspecting if you do go ahead) we've arranged for him to put things right for us this coming week - including the installation of a bigger consumer unit.

To save him time I decided to open up some of the floorboards ready for him (after all these years of countless DIY jobs I'm on first-name terms with most of the floorboards in the house I think!! - I certainly know which ones are easy to lift). While I was busy I decided today to add one extra cable myself to complete a ring main which seemingly never actually became a ring - this bit of work wasn't in his original estimate.

So we were silly to go for the cheapest quote all those years ago, and we've had two silly electricians doing jobs over the years. I get the vibes that this new chap knows what he's doing.,..hope I'm right!

Thank as always to admirer for looking after Silly Saturday so well, week after week.