Property Purchase - New Mains cable - looks messy

icstm

icstm

icstm

Associate
Joined
12 May 2011
Posts
14
Hi all,

Some quick feedback and commentary would be most welcome...
We are in the process of buying a house and on final viewing prior to exchange we noted this new plastic conduit coming from the electrical meter to the Consumer Unit. It looks pretty messy and also concerns us as there was a 2019 EICR which was passed.

Previously I assume the cable routing would have been internal to the wall as the CU is on the other side, high up (in line with the new hole).

1 - What might have caused the need for new tails?

2 - Is that conduit fit for purpose?

3 - Is that brickwork not compliant with anything (as clearly it looks shoddily done)

Thanks all for your advice!

IMAGE below:
LINK

FKfK2Lu.jpeg
 
I've never seen anything like this and it looks dodgy to me (although I'm not a qualified electrician). For instance, where the conduit goes into the hole in the wall, it does not look adequately weatherproofed. It looks like a bodge job. May well be unsafe, and also not nice to look at.
 
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Has the meter been moved outside?

Brickwork looks OK if not pretty.

A bit of mortar will weatherproof the opening.
 
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Is the consumer unit new? The meter box looks old, so unlikely to have been moved.

I would have thought the conduit should be metal, any reroute like that must have been done by a qualified electrician so there should be a certificate available.

Either way it would probably cost about £800 to get a new consumer unit and the wire redone.
 
IMO should have been done with the rigid ducting same as the cable behind atleast. Not being an electrician can't say if that flexy ducting is allowed for the wall passthrough. May need a proper rigid wall insert to properly protect the cable.
 
New upgraded fuse put in by the DNO which required higher rated tails? Either way this looks like a "didn't want to fish them through the walls, so we went for the easiest route" job to me. Unless there is an actual reason for using what looks like a vacuum hose
 
I’m a building surveyor and have never seen anything like that in my time. Again, I’m not a qualified electrician but I would be immediately requesting confirmation that it is regs compliant and certainly recommending it is assessed but a fully qualified electrician prior to exchange. It’s a hose off a vacuum for heavens sake.
 
I was kinda joking about the vacuum hose, but I'm glad someone else thought the same

Interesting that I'm sure I read about an up to date EICR.. if that's the case I'd be querying it!
 
I suspect it's fine from a regs point of view. What's probably happened is the electrician was expecting to be able to run the upgraded tails via the same route as the old tails. But this turned out not to be possible. The flexible contuit would have been fitted since normal meter tails are not UV resistant.

It does however look awful, and I would factor on getting the electrics looked at.
 
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exactly looked like a bypass - first thought was the gang that police just arrested for wiring up illicit grow sites (has op looked in loft)
how resilient is the flexible conduit, looks prone to accidental impact/snagging damage, at child height too.
 
Some people are so scared of doing interior decorating they sometimes insist on have a carbuncle of a cable bodge on the exterior..

But it's fixable, I'd just factor it in and ask for £500 to get that sorted by someone that has some actual pride in their work..
 
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