Electrical testing business

rum and coke

I am a qualified electrician looking for new ways to drum up a bit of business.Did you know that it is recommended that all electrical installations(the wiring in your house) should be tested every five years to ensure it is safe to use.
What I was wondering was do you think householders would pay for this test approx 250/300 euro,or would it just be put on the long finger. This is my first time posting on this forum so your honest opinion would be appreciated.

Thanks

leviathon

I for one would leave it on the long finger. Probably not the best way to be but for me unless there is a problem I won't look to fix it.

Irish Fire

leviathon wrote: »

I for one would leave it on the long finger. Probably not the best way to be but for me unless there is a problem I won't look to fix it.

+1

You would be better off looking at P.A.T. with this you would charge by the item but big outlay and would be commercial only....

rum and coke

Thanks for opinion.I was looking towards P.A.T but i think a lot of business dont bother with it.Is there a market for it. I have been in the fire industry for years and I think it is on its knees and im not sure pa testing is a cost commercial businesses will incur.

Again thanks for your reply

rum and coke

any more opinions

Irish Fire

rum and coke wrote: »

Thanks for opinion.I was looking towards P.A.T but i think a lot of business dont bother with it.Is there a market for it. I have been in the fire industry for years and I think it is on its knees and im not sure pa testing is a cost commercial businesses will incur.

Again thanks for your reply

They have no choice even the fire officers are looking for certs for it now.

antoinolachtnai

No. Consumers will not pay for this, or at least they are a lot less likely to pay than businesses would be. And would this really be good value anyway?

rum and coke

I think it is good value.What value can you put on the safety of your family and property.It may also reduce your insurance costs.

antoinolachtnai

What insurance company will give a discount for this? You could certainly market in conjunction with them.

The price just seems too high. 99 euros including VAT, maybe a bit more, would seem like a reasonable price for most regular three-beds built in the last 20 years.

It might be a good way to drum up further business.

If you want to sell peace of mind, mains-powered fire alarms would seem like a better thing to be selling.

deandean

Hi, well it sounds like a good idea to me, and best of luck with it. I'd make 3 comments:

1. I reckon almost everyone nowadays would only call an electrician in to fix stuff, i.e. after something has gone wrong, or to change/install stuff.

2. The majority of homeowners probably have "their own" electrician through previous jobs, family etc, and would prob prefer to stick with who they already know. I think (but I might be wrong) that all electricians nowadays have their own test kit such as is used to test a new installation.

3. Could you provide a better service with some new tools, e.g. if you had a thermal imaging camera you could scan their fuseboard?

rum and coke

The mains fire alarm is certainly a good idea,and it would be a service offered but its reactive.I would be trying to convince people to be more proactive in their approach.I am not sure if insurance companies will offer discounts I am just hoping.Perhaps its something I should be looking at.As for 99 euro I think you would be losing money doing it for this.
Also with all the housing estates built over the last ten years or so I bet the majority of people do not know who wired it or if they are still in business.An angle i intend using is that I would have no vested interest in making up imaginery problems just to get money to repair them.This is what a lot of U.K companies do.Thermal imaging is something I have looked at for commercial customers,but I am not in a financial position to invest in one at the moment.
Maybe I am mad but in todays climate we have to look at every angle.

Again all replies are greatly appreciated

antoinolachtnai

I do think you are right that a lot of people don't have a 'relationship' with an electrician, especially on new estates. The reality is that electrical stuff hardly ever goes wrong and people hardly ever need an electrician in a new building. (You may feel differently about it but that's because you spend your days dealing with problems.)

That is one of the drawbacks with having just having had a building boom - the housing stock is certainly in better shape than it has ever been and as a result, requires less maintenance/renewal than before.

Would you really be losing money at 99 euros? I mean, I know you wouldn't be making much money, but do you actually have something else to do in those hours?

rum and coke

Valid point mate,while you wouldnt be making a fortune,as you say at least you are out and about.The statistics for house fires caused by electrical faults are quite disturbing,and as a member of the electrical industry its pains me to say that the quality of installation during the celtic tiger rapidly declined.Having had the pleasure of dealing with my house insurance company recently(burst pipes) I would like to remove any chance of them refusing to pay out.After all the householder is responsible for the electricity in their house and not the ESB.
Most of the people I asked said they would like to get it done,but as I'm sure you know yourself it could be a different story when it comes to payment.
Would you be happy to pay 99 euro?????????
Appreciate your responses in this

antoinolachtnai

What are the statistics for electrical fires? Really, if there are some decent stats, there is business in it. You could scale it up if you could find a way to work with insurers and ESB networks. The thing is that if one house in an estate has an electrical problem, there is a good chance that other houses in the estate have similar issues. To go further, there's a good chance that other houses certified by the same electrician have issues.

If there is dodgy celtic tiger wiring and the insurance won't pay out, then you would go after the electrician who certified it and their insurer.

But don't push your luck! The price points that consumers are willing to pay at are pretty limited.

rum and coke

40% of house fires in Ireland are caused by electrical faults.When you consider that 50 people will die this year as a result of a house fire,20 of those will die as a result of an electrical fault,the vast majority elderly and young children.It might not seem that much but if you think of it as your neighbour or loved one its far too much.I don't want to frighten people with statistics I want to be able to conduct a viable business and maybe make a difference to home safety.
As for the electricians insurance company paying out in the event of an accident I'm pretty sure they will look to see the periodic inspection report to ensure the householder had the installation tested(ETCI recommends that domestic dwellings be tested every 5 years)

rum and coke

any other opinions?

Irish Fire

rum and coke wrote: »

any other opinions?

That's the second time you've asked that question, how many opinions do you need??:rolleyes:

deandean

rum and coke wrote: »

40% of house fires in Ireland are caused by electrical faults.

Source?

jetsonx

As other posts have said the consumer market would not pay for this.

In fact i would go as far to say as, even if you did a formal market research survey on this alot of the respondents would claim they would buy the service at a certain price point but in reality would be telling porkies.

The only way the consumer would pay for this would be if it was mandatory.

SparKing

To say consumers will not pay is obviously not true, you don't need every house in your area to use your business to make a viable business. As an electrician I can say that in my experience a large percentage of houses and businesses are not as safe as they could be electrically, It should be mandatory for an installation to be checked every 10 years, there are still plenty of houses out there with the old DZ type fuse arrangement, No RCD, Immersions not on RCD, Electric Shower not on RCD and other potentially dangerous electrical situations, I would say you could do a test on a house for €150, if you come across potentially dangerous situations which may need to be resolved a rough price schedule for any work to be carried out would have to be very transparent as most people haven't a clue about the wiring in their houses/businesses.

Bruthal

rum and coke wrote: »

I think it is good value.What value can you put on the safety of your family and property.It may also reduce your insurance costs.

I dont think it would be myself, how many fatalities are there yearly from bad wiring? Its very small. I have seen horrific wiring in houses, and shown the owners the state of it, and still they leave it, simply because its working, and has caused no problems up to then. Im not saying that means its ok, just that thats how people see it.

As well as that, an installation can pass tests, but this will not prove its perfect, or immune from connections burning a few months later. For example, an earth loop impedance test would probably pass with the socket circuit earth conductor just touching the earth bar, as this test puts no load on the circuit, so how would a test guarantee a shower switch was going to burn out in a few months, or a hidden junction box etc?

The testing of installations will of course find problems in some installations, and serious problems in some also, but people just wont pay out for an installation to be tested when everything works.

Look at smoke detectors for example, very cheap, and proven to save lives. Yet some still dont have even one in their house, even though they will see people in the news killed by fires.

Very few fires seem to be directly related to electrical wiring problems, but more to appliances and other causes, and many for which the cause is not found.

This might show some idea of fire causes, electrical wiring is not high on the list. What can be seen is the high number without smoke alarms, so it can be seen that some people wont even install a low cost battery powered one, and how expensive are they considering that if everyone installed a properly working one, fire fatalities would probably be drastically reduced.

Joey the lips

There is not a hope i would pay for this unless i saw a danger. I lived at home in a 20 year house then i moved to a house that was already 40 years old. I am now in a new 5 year house.

The most i ever had to do was change a fuse because water leaked from my taps onto the lights.

Not a hope i would pay for this and no its not a requirement by insurence companies and they will not lower your insurence policy.

SparKing

Ah but therein lies the point, would average Joe(y) recognise a potential danger? As the mod for Plumbing and Heating, you would no doubt recommend a yearly service to central heating system, why would a check-up on an electrical system once a decade be any worse value, that said, most peoples financial situation wouldn't allow for another household bill that isn't deemed necessary by a lot of people.

antoinolachtnai

It's not that it wouldn't be good value (although it might not be) but in the consumer world there is a severe constraint on what people will pay for.

Sometimes for protected structures, the insurance companies will moan and groan about an electrician's cert. If you are interested and able to work on protected structures, there could be work there.

Bruthal

SparKing wrote: »

Ah but therein lies the point, would average Joe(y) recognise a potential danger? As the mod for Plumbing and Heating, you would no doubt recommend a yearly service to central heating system, why would a check-up on an electrical system once a decade be any worse value, that said, most peoples financial situation wouldn't allow for another household bill that isn't deemed necessary by a lot of people.

The thing is though, its not so much about recommending anything, its about getting people to pay to have an installation tested, an installation they have probably never seen a single problem with in years.

It would be recommended to have your car serviced at certain intervals, because it has wear and tear on it, and most people have been broken down sometime, and a central heating system has wear and tear also, but electrical installations are one of those things people see lasting for very long periods of time without ever having any maintenance, and no problems.

And testing will only indicate obvious problems, a birds nest of connectors hidden in a wall can easily pass a test, and later cause problems. A connector block hidden in a partition wall on a socket circuit would be not great, but could easily pass any tests. So tests would not prove an installation is faultless.

Of course, obvious problems would be found in some installations, but a common solution would be houses needing rewires, and people wont want to pay €300 just to be told they need a rewire.

SparKing

In fairness Robbie I couldn't see people with up to date consumer units in relatively new houses availing of the service, but there has to be thousands of houses still in this country with the old DZ fuseboards and not everybody is broke either so there may be a viable business there, even if that as only a part of the business in conjunction with other electrical services. The County and City councils could be interested in having their properties tested maybe or property management companies, auctioneers etc.

Bruthal

Possibly, it was mainly domestic installations i was referring to.

onedmc

I dont think I would pay 250 because I'm skint.

And I'm not sure I'd trust that the average electrician would do a good job. But If you had some some specilist skills or kit over and aboved the average then there may be somthing in it.

I noticed that all the plugs, trail sockets etc in my uk office has a label with "Tested dd/mm/yy"

I therefore think small business especially with customer facing sockets would be better target, creches, coffie shops, bars and eateries. I often plug my laptop into coffie shop plugs and I have seen a few smashed ones.

These Business not only need to check electrical outlets but they also need to be seen to check so a second idependent electricians certificate would be a good idea.

Electricsail

rum and coke wrote: »

40% of house fires in Ireland are caused by electrical faults.
Where do these figures come from? I was involved in electrical safety in Ireland more than 20 years ago, these figures were used by the Electro Technical Council of Ireland to push for safer installations and more stringent testing. On looking into them, it turned out that everything electrical which caused a fire was included...Electric fire with a blanket falling on it, chip pan fire on an electric cooker...the list went on. They finally admitted that very few fires were caused by electrical faults, just electrical appliances.
As regards insurance companies giving a discount, it is not in their interest to do so. But it might not be in your interest either. If you test an installation and it passes and subsequently the building burns down. The fire officer points the finger at an electrical fault.....You take the rap!!

Irish Fire

O.P. I would suggest that you really look into the insurance aspect of this idea, while it is a reasonable idea I honestly think that unless you are doing this along with other services it will not earn you a good living.

As I mentioned earlier you should look at P.A.T. or Thermal Imaging etc.... to run along side what you want to do. I know this equipment very expensive so it would be a while before you make a good profit. Don't forget that this equipment generally needs to be recalibrated every year or two and sometimes it's nearly as cheap to replace rather than calibrate.

You mentioned earlier that the fire industry is on it's knees, I would tend to disagree, there is work out there and sometimes is cold calling that will get you the work and you will get some P.A.T. out of this as well as the fire officers are pushing this in a big way at the moment. Em Lighting is another thing you can do along side the fire alarms but I would advise you to look closely at the new regulations on this as the majority of Fire Officers in Ireland have done courses on the new regulations on both fire and em lighting, and they are now down to the nitty gritty on how to operate and interrogate a fire panel and not just looking at the display to see if the fault light is lit up.

I'm not trying to teach you how to suck eggs here but you will need to wear out some shoes knocking on doors because (unlike some people think) creating a facebook page/twitter account etc.... will not generate enough cash flow to keep you afloat.......

rum and coke

Irish Fire
Thanks for your reply but do you not think there are too many working in the fire industry at the moment.It seems that there is a lot of small companies springing up from the big few(not saying anything wrong with that I am one),and it just seems like a race to the bottom.As for cold calling it's the most frustrating thing on the planet for me.To try and get the person responsible for the life safety system to even come and meet you is practically impossible.Maybe it's just my techniques.As for the fire officers getting more clued in I think thats a great thing,the sooner they start shutting down buildings the better.Have you experienced fire officers requesting pat results and if so what part of the country.

Irish Fire

rum and coke wrote: »

Irish Fire
Thanks for your reply but do you not think there are too many working in the fire industry at the moment.It seems that there is a lot of small companies springing up from the big few(not saying anything wrong with that I am one),and it just seems like a race to the bottom.As for cold calling it's the most frustrating thing on the planet for me.To try and get the person responsible for the life safety system to even come and meet you is practically impossible.Maybe it's just my techniques.As for the fire officers getting more clued in I think thats a great thing,the sooner they start shutting down buildings the better.Have you experienced fire officers requesting pat results and if so what part of the country.

I tend to agree there are a lot of small companies out there (lads let go from the likes of Apex etc....) but I feel they only make contact with their old customers and they tend not to survive. I am small as well and cold calling is a pain in the ass but it's the only way you will grow and develop. It's amazing the results you get when you try. At the start you may only have a 1 in 10 success rate but as you get more confident you will bring this back to about 1 in 4 or 5. I would suggest you start locally and work from there.

I'm finding that fire officers not are justifing their existance (I'm going to rattle a few cages with that comment) and now that they don't have the sites to visit they are back to visiting shops pubs offices etc.... and hitting them hard. While P.A.T. does not really come under their control they can look for it because of the fire risk that may arise. I would know a lot of the fire officers around the country and they are looking for P.A.T. certs more and more but not only that they are looking for the qualifications of the people that carry out the tests in all aspects of safety i.e. fire em lighting etc..... I was at a meeting last week where I upgraded a fire system and the I was asked to look at upgrading the em lighting I didn't take it on as I would not have got all the work completed before the fire officers deadline, so my client got another company to do the work. The fire officer twigged mistakes made on the upgrade of the lights and ripped the M.D. of the company a new rear end in the meeting, he was so annoyed he wants to a list of all the projects they completed in the county and he is going to inspect them. I know of several inspections lately that have been done with a fine tooth comb and the reports back from the fire officers are very detailed and almost damming of the install companies involved.

whiteblueman

What is the current rate for one of these reports?