Duravault

A word of warning! ⚠️

If you’re looking to buy new light fittings to spruce up your home in time for Christmas, be careful of what you buy.

Unfortunately, buying lights is an absolute mine field! There are soooooo many options and different suppliers online it’s hard to know what to buy.

As your go to, local electrician we have had to refuse to install some light fittings recently unless other work has been carried out to safely install the lights.

We are finding more and more that lighting suppliers are making lights to European standards and supplying them with tiny connection boxes. Most older UK houses will have 3-4 cables enter a light fitting, making it impossible to connect them into the tiny connections boxes that are being supplied.

It’s not that these lights can’t be installed, it just makes the job longer and there’s a possibility of other work that has to be carried in order for the light to be fitted ultimately costing more money.

Here are some tips and things to look out for when buying light fittings.

look for class 1 fittings. This means they need to be earthed and therefore any other necessary connections can be made within the base of the light fitting making installation easier
Be very, very wary of Amazon. There appears to be some people getting away with selling things on this platform that don’t apply to UK standards or are being falsely claimed as being certified!
Try and look for UK manufacturers and brands as these will be best placed for the UK market.
You can always consult your local electrician before making a lighting purchase.

If you’re looking to buy new light fittings for your home, get in touch today for free advice on what you might need.

📞 0113 436 9988

💻 https://zurl.co/O9cfK

You'd think getting a new build house everything would be done to regulations and in a safe condition right?.......

WRONG!

We found this on a new build house that had only one owner from new and no other work had been done, therefore this must have been done during the build.

In reality someone had f***ed up and wanted the quickest and cheapest way to sort the issue even if it was going against regs.

There was also many questionable things the builder had found during the renovation.

The amount of hoops we jump through to do our jobs correctly and to regs yet people are getting away with stuff like this.

Drives me mad!

But what can be done about it?

Although we are specialist domestic electricians, we do sometimes carry out small electrical works for some of our commercial clients at our sister company Volta Compliance .

This little project was for our long standing customers Tadcaster Community Swimming Pool . This project was to help them with installing new lighting under the mezzanine for a new accessible changing room.

We installed a non-corrosive IP65 emergency batten light with built in microwave sensor for automatic switching meaning there is no need for a switch!

Main equipotential bonding......... what is it?

Most of you will have never heard of this but what if I told you this could save your life? 💀

So what is it?

Main equipotential bonding basically earthing any and all exposed electrically conductive parts, keeping you safe from electric shock. Not only that, in some cases, an arc fault could also potentially create holes in pipe work causing leaks or even worse , explosions on gas pipes.

How do you fix it?

This is a really simple fix, connect an earth cable from your fuseboard to your main water stop tap and to your main incoming gas pipe.

Check out the pictures to see what your main equipotential bonding connection should look like.

If your unsure whether your exposed pipe work is earth bonded, give us a call today on 0113 436 9988