Back by popular request, we will be speaking on the subject of electrical safety to RICS members in Exeter on 29th March 2011. This will be a practical talk with lots of examples of common faults, things to watch out for, likely problems and samples of different failures, causes etc. For more information please contact us or RICS
No, not what you think, but a brief introduction to electrical safety. After an initial outing at the 4N meeting in Taunton before christmas, we will be giving this talk to the Honiton Business Club on Thursday 24rd February, at the Monkton Court Hotel at 7.30am, (yes that did say am). Visitors welcome, but please let us know first. This is then being repeated at the 4N Exeter meeting on Friday 25th February at the Blue Ball Inn, Exeter at 8am. Plenty of coffee required this week!!
Well a busy start to the new year with several call outs to access electrical safety before the clean up crews can go in after floods. ( 4 today!) Lots of frozen pipes causing mayhem now the weather has warmed up a little.
One tip with condensing boilers, check if the condensate pipe is run outside?? if it is, is it insulated?? We have had a few call outs where the condensate pipe has frozen and blocked causing the boilers to stop working.
When you are putting up that new picture where do you hang it??
Not everyone realises that cables, (if correctly installed) run in very specific areas in the wall. Cables should NOT run diagonally, so if you have a switch or a socket cables should run either horizontally to/from it or vertically to/from it. Its a good idea to think of this BEFORE you put that picture hook in the wall!
We were called out this week because a house had lost some of its power just 6 weeks after we had just installed a new consumer unit , the RCD had tripped. The fault was traced to an old picture hook where the nail had gone through a cable, presumably it had been close to going through the insulation before, someone knocked it and that was enough for the nail to touch the copper. Good job the board had been changed otherwise the fault would not have been detected! So remember check before you hammer in the nail!
Just a note to say thank you for all the visitors that came to see us at the Landlord Expo, very useful event, will be sending out info today for all that requested it. For any that missed it why not contact us directly. Our next event is a seminar in Exeter, more info on that later
We are exhibiting at the Landlords Expo on 24/11/2010. This is being held at Sandy Park, Exeter from 12pm to 7pm, and organised by several local councils. There are stands from various companies ranging from insurance companies, landlords associations, cleaning compies etc, etc and of course us. There are also seminars, lots of information on relevant topics for landlords so why not come down and see us.
Actually we don’t mind them we work on them a lot, but thats what a lot of heating engineers say. They find them over complicated, unreliable and many will not touch them. Went to one today where the powermax boiler was not working and the letting agent had been told it was unrepairable and needed to be replaced. We went to give an alternate quote and found in this instance the Powermax was not to blame. It was was a supply fault, once Transco had been the boiler was working normally. So one more Powermax saved to heat again, well at least for the moment.
We are really busy at the moment as the cold weather arrives, lots of pumps and valves not working or radiators blocked. Great tip if your heating and hot water is supplied by a boiler, over the summer when you do not need the heating just turn in on every now and then to keep the system moving. If you do not then it is possible especially with older systems that the rubbish in the system water settles and can block radiators or valves and pumps that normally operate all the time in the winter stick in one position so when you turn your heating on for the first time in 6 months they will not operate. Just keeping the system moving every now and then in the summer could prevent callouts in the winter.
A first for us, on 21st October we held a seminar on common electrical faults for RICS members in Taunton. Thank you to all who attended, we had a full house with over 40 surveyors present and I did not hear any snoring ( always a good sign). We have had great feedback and have been asked back to do some more, so Steve must have done a good job! For those that missed it we will post future events here
Well here’s the first blog. We hope to add in here some interesting facts, tips, answer questions, general information on things relating to electrical and gas matters. So if you have a question or are confused about something let us know we will do our best to help
Egret Ltd, Willow House, 2 Church Drive,
West Buckland, Wellington, Somerset TA21 9LZ
Telephone: 01823 668623 • Fax: 01823 669137
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