Anyone interested in old colour cable?

[mbga9pgf]

You can just as easily lie and turn your house sale into a case of serious fraud if you use harmonised cable, as it's been around for 11 years.

Nope, they stamp it now with the date of production. And I question the phrase "serious fraud".

Its only fraud if you get caught. Then, only if they can prove that you were doing it to get round the joke that is part P notification.

Do you work for LABC or association that relies on part P perchance BAS?

 

[Paul_C]

Nope, they stamp it now with the date of production.

And as I hinted at earlier, all that proves by itself is that the cable could not have been installed before it was made.

No notification is required to make extensions to certain circuits, and if you put a nail or screw through a cable while doing something else, no notification is required to replace a length of damaged cable.

Obviously if the wiring is part of a newly erected extension or something along those lines you might have a hard time, but there are so many exceptions that in many cases it would practically impossible for the local building gestapo to prove that odd additions you made here and there were notifiable work which you did not notify, since they have no idea what was there pre-2005.

 

[mbga9pgf]

Unfortunately, the job I have to do involves 2 radials wired into the CU as a ring.
No continuity, so having to rewire from the CU, to every point spurred on the circuit, which makes subsequent explaination to the LABC Nazis difficult.

Good job I have a ready supply of 2005 cable then isnt it

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I agree entirely that the adoption of the new scheme introduced the potential for confusion with both blue and black "changing places," and BS7671 tacitly acknowledges this fact with the label requirement. I'm certainly of the opinion that matching up where possible is a sensible approach.

You say that, and then you proceed to show that you don't believe that at all, even to the extent of perverse interpretations of everyday English words.

However, the officially issued guidance notes for Part P indicate that "in the Secretary of State's view" one method of achieving compliance with this part of the building regulations is to follow BS7671. How, therefore, could it possibly be considered illegal to extend a red/black circuit in brown/blue when BS7671 permits this and compliance with BS7671 is also deemed to constitute compliance with Part P? (In fact the current edition not only permits it, it requires it, either by using actual brown/blue cable or by applying appropriate sleeving).

Because a BS 7671 certificate allows deviations to be recorded. Work done which deviates is still compliant if the deviations are recorded and if the nature of the deviation does not contravene 120.3. Since the regulations themselves recognise that mixing colours introduces a risk it can hardly be considered less safe to avoid mixing them.

But what if I don't have any suitable red/black cable stashed away?

Then it's not available to you and it would be unreasonable to expect you to use it.

It would still be available to me if I cared to look around, since old stocks can still be found. I could even search eBay and pay some ridiculously inflated price for 3 or 4 yards of old-stock 2.5 T&E, so it would be "available" to me, would it not?

Yes.

But yet again it appears to be you who has trouble understanding, or simply refuses to understand, what "reasonable" means.

If you think that it would be reasonable to expect you to search out old cable on eBay or at car boot sales, and reasonable to expect you to pay way more than the price of harmonised cable then there's no point you carrying on trying to debate this, because your view of what is reasonable is utterly bizarre.

If, however, you don't think that it would be reasonable to expect you to put that much effort into finding cable and to pay extra for it, then you've answered your own question and all is well - by reasonable standards the cable is not available to you and therefore it would not be reasonable to expect you to use it.

Would you still claim that it's illegal to use brown/blue to extend, because I could acquire some red/black?

Would you claim that making you find and buy at inflated prices old cable on eBay was a reasonable thing for the law to do?

If, by some unprecedented miracle the penny drops with you about the word "reasonable" and you can answer my question, then you'll have the answer to yours.

Aside from having to define "available," your interpretation of "reasonable" would give rise to the ridiculous situation in which having old cable available or not would result in the final installation using brown/blue to extend being either legal or illegal, even though the final result in both cases would be exactly the same.

I'm sorry that you have a problem with understanding the concept of "reasonable".

It must make it very difficult for you to understand Part P.

You seem to be using the same rather bizarre interpretation of "reasonable" as you did about non-U.K. sockets some time ago:

No - I'm using the same one.

The one which has no special meaning.

The one which the vast majority of the population have no problem with, as they go about their lives, behaving reasonably, expecting others to behave reasonably, obeying rules which require them to behave reasonably and so on.

And as before, it is you who is not investing the word "reasonable", or the concept of "reasonableness" with anything which a reasonable person would regard as reasonable.

Seriously - if you think that the theoretical availability of red/black cable on the second-hand market means that it would be reasonable to make you use it then you are beyond reasoning with.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

And I question the phrase "serious fraud".

Maybe you do.

But making false statements and issuing false documents in order to persuade someone to complete a transaction to the value of hundreds of thousands of pounds which you fear they would not do if you were honest with them is a serious matter.

Its only fraud if you get caught.

Don't be stupid.

Then, only if they can prove that you were doing it to get round the joke that is part P notification.

They don't have to prove that at all.

All they have to do is to prove that when your buyer asked you a question about the condition of the property you lied to him.

Do you work for LABC or association that relies on part P perchance BAS?

No.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

local building gestapo.

As I said - you are beyond reason.

And probably being deeply offensive to anybody with a personal connection to the atrocities carried out by the real Gestapo.

LABC Nazis

You too.

 

[mbga9pgf]

Yep, definate council worker.

No sense of humour and definately been on too many equal ops and diversity cash-wasting courses.

 

[ban-all-sheds]

Yep, definate council worker.

You really should avoid drawing inferences or coming to conclusions, which you then make public, because you are spectacularly bad at doing it, and all you do is to make yourself look even more stupid than you already have.

No sense of humour

Wrong again.

and definately been on too many equal ops and diversity cash-wasting courses.

Oh my - a hat trick of idiocy.

 

[Paul_C]

You say that, and then you proceed to show that you don't believe that at all, even to the extent of perverse interpretations of everyday English words.

I said that I agree that matching up the cables if possible is a sensible idea to keep the colors consistent. In my opinion it was a stupid move to adopt the "harmonized" standard in the first place.

But what you or I think of the relative merits of one system over the other, or of mixing them in an installation, is not the point of contention here. What I'm disputing is your claim that adding a brown/blue extension to an existing red/black installation could be illegal (all based upon whether you happen to have suitable red/black cable laying around waiting to be used).

Because a BS 7671 certificate allows deviations to be recorded. Work done which deviates is still compliant if the deviations are recorded and if the nature of the deviation does not contravene 120.3. Since the regulations themselves recognise that mixing colours introduces a risk it can hardly be considered less safe to avoid mixing them.

I've never argued that it could be. As far as the legality is concerned, as in compliance with the "reasonable provision" requirement of Part P, it comes down to two questions, although I don't expect straight answers from you:

1. Do you dispute that according to official guidance for Part P, "in the view of the Secretary of State" an installation which complies in all respects with BS7671 is considered as meeting the legal requirements of Part P?

2. Assuming that the appropriate warning label is applied, do you dispute that an installation in which brown/blue cable has been used to extend an existing circuit wired with red/black complies with BS7671?

If the answer either of the above questions is yes, then please explain why you think so. If the answer to both questions is no, then I don't see how you can possibly claim any sort of illegality.

But what if I don't have any suitable red/black cable stashed away?

Then it's not available to you and it would be unreasonable to expect you to use it.

Can you really think of any other example where a local authority would accept "I don't have the right material to hand" as an acceptable excuse for carrying out work which does not comply with the appropriate part of the building regs?

But yet again it appears to be you who has trouble understanding, or simply refuses to understand, what "reasonable" means.

If you think that it would be reasonable to expect you to search out old cable on eBay or at car boot sales, and reasonable to expect you to pay way more than the price of harmonised cable then there's no point you carrying on trying to debate this, because your view of what is reasonable is utterly bizarre.

I'm not saying it would be reasonable to expect me, or anyone else, to do that. I was asking you to explain how you defined "available."

I still don't see it as reasonable for you to believe that extending with brown/blue can be illegal just because you happen to have some red/black cable laying around when (a) it complies with BS7671 which in turn is deemed to be compliance with Part P, and (b) you acknowledge that an installation which ends up exactly the same will be perfectly legal if no red/black is easily available.

To claim that of two identical installations one is legal while the other is not is absurd. How the installation arrived at having mixed cables is irrelevant (besides which, nobody is going to know whether or not you had some suitable old cable laying around anyway). The building regs. are about meeting a certain minimum acceptable standard, in this case making "reasonable provision" for safety, not about whether of two choices available you opted for the better one.

Would you claim that making you find and buy at inflated prices old cable on eBay was a reasonable thing for the law to do?

No, but then neither is it reasonable for the law to demand many of the things which it does demand (e.g. paying over £100 to the local council to add a socket in my own kitchen), so I don't see how that comes into the argument.

I'm sorry that you have a problem with understanding the concept of "reasonable".

It must make it very difficult for you to understand Part P.

I think it's your perverse way of trying to interpret it which is the problem, just as in that earlier thread. The comments by BS3036 sum it up.

You seem to be using the same rather bizarre interpretation of "reasonable" as you did about non-U.K. sockets some time ago:

No - I'm using the same one.

Precisely.

 

[SimonH2]

OK lads, I'm just popping out for some popcorn

 

[holmslaw]

..

 

[Robgers]

OK lads, I'm just popping out for some popcorn

That seems reasonable

 

[ban-all-sheds]

I've never argued that it could be. As far as the legality is concerned, as in compliance with the "reasonable provision" requirement of Part P, it comes down to two questions, although I don't expect straight answers from you:

1. Do you dispute that according to official guidance for Part P, "in the view of the Secretary of State" an installation which complies in all respects with BS7671 is considered as meeting the legal requirements of Part P?

No, I do not.

Do you dispute that an installation with mixed colours is less safe than one without and that continuing to use old colours does not make the work you do non-compliant with BS 7671?

2. Assuming that the appropriate warning label is applied, do you dispute that an installation in which brown/blue cable has been used to extend an existing circuit wired with red/black complies with BS7671?

No, I do not.

Do you dispute that such an installation would present greater hazards to someone maintaining or altering it in the future than one where the colours had not been mixed?

If the answer either of the above questions is yes, then please explain why you think so. If the answer to both questions is no, then I don't see how you can possibly claim any sort of illegality.

1) There is no regulation which prevents you from using red and black cable today.

2) Using R/B cable to extend/modify an R/B installation is safer than using new colours.

3) If you have no reason to insist on using the new colours, if you can reasonably use the old ones then choosing not to do so is not a reasonable course of action.

4) Unreasonably making an installation less safe than you could otherwise reasonably do does not qualify as making reasonable provision to protect etc etc.

Can you really think of any other example where a local authority would accept "I don't have the right material to hand" as an acceptable excuse for carrying out work which does not comply with the appropriate part of the building regs?

Again you refuse to recognise the presence of the word "reasonable", and again you insist that if I'm right the theoretical availability of something to you would make its use mandatory, whereas what I'm saying, over and over again, is that you must consider a reasonableness test.

I'm not saying it would be reasonable to expect me, or anyone else, to do that.

Then why, when all along I've talked in terms of it being reasonably available to you did you dream up the scenario of searching eBay and paying some ridiculously inflated price for 3 or 4 yards of old-stock 2.5 T&E because it was "available" to you?

You don't think it would be reasonable to expect you to do that in order to have the cable available, I've not suggested it would be reasonable - my whole argument hinges around what is or is not reasonable behaviour and yet as soon as I talked about the cable being reasonably available to you you put forward that ludicrous argument about "availability" without any regard to reasonable availability.

Why?

I was asking you to explain how you defined "available."

I originally said if you have it available. Not "could make it available quite easily", or "could get some if I tried".

... if you have NOS pre-harmonisation cable available ...

...What I said was that if you have got some NOS pre-harmonisation cable available ...

... if you have old-colour cable in new condition available ...

But what if I don't have any suitable red/black cable stashed away?

Then it's not available to you

But it seems that you are unwilling or unable to use a reasonable definition of "have available".

I still don't see it as reasonable for you to believe that extending with brown/blue can be illegal just because you happen to have some red/black cable laying around when (a) it complies with BS7671 which in turn is deemed to be compliance with Part P, and (b) you acknowledge that an installation which ends up exactly the same will be perfectly legal if no red/black is easily available.

To claim that of two identical installations one is legal while the other is not is absurd. How the installation arrived at having mixed cables is irrelevant (besides which, nobody is going to know whether or not you had some suitable old cable laying around anyway). The building regs. are about meeting a certain minimum acceptable standard, in this case making "reasonable provision" for safety, not about whether of two choices available you opted for the better one.

You have a choice of two actions, A or B.

A is safer than B.

A is not harder to do than B.

A is not going to take you longer to do than B.

A is not going to cost you more than B.

A is not prohibited by any legislation or regulation.

You have no reason to avoid doing A.

Yo have no reason to prefer doing B.

Giving all that, deliberately choosing the less safe option for absolutely no reason at all is not reasonable behaviour. It is unreasonable.

No, but then neither is it reasonable for the law to demand many of the things which it does demand (e.g. paying over £100 to the local council to add a socket in my own kitchen), so I don't see how that comes into the argument.

It comes into it because we are talking about the law requiring you to behave reasonably.

So you don't think it would be reasonable to scour eBay, I've never suggested it would be reasonable for you to scour eBay, in fact I've never suggested that it would be reasonable for you to make any effort to acquire such cable, and you don't think that it would be reasonable for the law to require you to do it.

And yet because some laws are deemed to be unreasonable you decided to throw all reason out of your argument and suggest that we can't imagine any laws being reasonable.

I think it's your perverse way of trying to interpret it which is the problem, just as in that earlier thread.

Why is it perverse to regard a decision to reduce safety, made without any basis in reason, as being unreasonable?

 

[holmslaw]

..

 

[RF Lighting]

NO ONE CARES ANYMORE