Maybe I am wrong I am sure someone on here can let us know the actual facts.
But I was always under the impression that if you’re a homeowner and you carry out your own electrical work, then if should you ever move or rent your property you will be asked to present all the certification for the electrical work carried out.
Obviously as you are a diy'er you cannot certify anything, but also as far as I was aware you cannot obtain the appropriate certification at a later stage following your own installation of electrical work,
I believe most competent electricians will not go and certify home diy'ers work, only work carried out by a professional in the first place, who should, obviously have certified it themselves.
Also don't forget, if someone is injured, or a property is damaged, your household insurance will be invalid if you do not have all the appropriate certification to prove the system is safe.
I'm currently renovating a house. I do most things that do not involve going above the guttering (im not good with heights). Each time i pull a room down to the joists and brick work i find an astonishing amount of poor tradesman work. The electrics were signed off in this house, i have a certificate to prove it. However the work that has been done is very poor.
Getting something 'signed off' is a total farse and not to be trusted, its just as bad as letting an average diy'er loose. I'm certanly not the only one seeing this. In the real world a 'sign off' certificate is about as useful as a cardboard box is at stopping bullets.
If someone does a lot of rework, its all under floor boards and chased into walls and no one is ever going to see it again. If someone comes to sign electrics off, which they will do for a cut of your earnings, they'll take a few sockets off the wall and make sure you have got a sleeve to indicate the earth, or a sleeve on the live line on a light switch, and thats about it. They will not pull up floorboards and track cables. They will not check you have put brick pillars and insulation on a ground floor, they will not check you have replaced wood lintles with concrete.
When we bought the house the owner had to pay £65 to get what is called a 'No regs policy' this covered us for all the work that was done on the house that had not been 'signd off', this included a 'self fitted' drop curb, building an extension within a certain distance to a drain, and new windows. So they saved hundreds of pounds by not getting things 'signed off'. We understood what this meant for us, but we already had plans to pull down the extension and the whole street was going to be 'drop curbed' by the council, so all wrong doings would be sorted. This shows that you do not have to get things signed off if you want to move.
The whole ethos for someone signing stuff of is junk. If an owner has botch their electrics they are not going to tell anyone they did rework... "oh that must have been the previous owners, i didnt touch anything"
In sort, a peice of paper will not shield you from falling objects.
Next door house to us was bought very cheap and botched to hell, it was all signed off. We are on the 3rd person to move in there now, its only been 2.5 years since the builder who bought it sold it. Each new person had a full servey done on the house, and all have failed to point out the problems. The original builder who bought the house showed me around a few times trying to show off his work, it was a joke.
I'm not saying its right not to get things signed off by a 'professional' but it is pointless. Anyone who has botched their electrics will not tell anyone so therefor not get it signed off.
We had a new combi boiler fitted, the 'professional' left us with a gas leak. He had a great many good reviews on check a trade. There are just too many bad 'professionals' out there to trust any of them.
