Domestic electrician based in North Wiltshire
Most students have gone back to University or College around this time of year [written in October 2022] and lots of parents have ferried their offspring and their worldly goods off to some suitable student accommodation. Halls of residence are normally well maintained and have lots of industrial strength alarm systems and sprinklers. However, the … Continue reading Smoke alarms (and students)
Depending upon your temperament as an electrician, finding faults can be either the bane of your life or smugly satisfying when you discover their cause. YouTube is full of angry sparkies pointing out where they have discovered some ‘Donald DIY’ enthusiast (or even sometimes Fully Qualified Fred) has wired up something lethal, or maybe extolling … Continue reading Finding and fixing faults
Most people would rather leave any electrical work to somebody qualified (or at least very experienced) in the trade. However, there is nothing legally that can stop* any homeowner carrying out work on the electrics in their own house: what can happen is that Building Control (part of your County Council’s remit) can insist that … Continue reading Tools for DIY Electrics
The ‘Lady of the Manor’ persuaded me to redecorate one of our bedrooms recently. The wall concerned had a couple of surface-mounted sockets in the plaster, so I took the opportunity to try out a new bit of electrical installation kit called Sockitz: Invented by Richard Brook (who managed to get investment for these products … Continue reading Redecorating tips
Why on earth would you want to know anything about French electrics? Bear with me, though perhaps you should look away now if you: For those of you fortunate (or mad) enough to own/rent a French property, the electrics can be a little confusing. A small table of common electrical features illustrates the point: UK … Continue reading Across the channel: French electrics
The UK government recently announced that the sale of halogen light bulbs will cease after September 2021 and fluorescent lights (i.e. strip light tubes and CFL bulbs) sometime in 2023. This had already been planned for several years right across Europe, to allow countries to reduce their overall energy demand. This change follows on from … Continue reading Older light bulbs: going…going…gone.
Now that we are all increasingly using online shopping to buy these things like LED lights, switches, downlighters, etc., we assume that these things are all made to the same standards aren’t they? I mean, they wouldn’t allow dodgy electrical goods to be sold online, would they? Alas, this is sadly not the case**. No … Continue reading Electrical items bought online shock
Recently we took the plunge and decided to have smart meters installed (two – one for Electric and one for Gas) by our energy supplier SSE Plc. The process itself is straightforward and can be booked on the SSE website, but I would just like to call out a really useful tip here that will … Continue reading Smart meter install
One of my recent rather obscure jobs was to fix a Watchman heating oil tank sensor. This device lets the owner know (via a radio signal to a plug giving an audible warning) that their heating oil is running out and best to ring up the supplier pronto. This device was installed many years ago … Continue reading Oil tank sensor failure
Quite incredibly, a good proportion of the UK’s electricity is now produced from renewable sources (like wind farms and solar panels). What is even more amazing is that at any time of the night or day you can actually see how much of the National Grid’s electricity comes from all these energy sources (and the … Continue reading Where does our electricity come from?
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